SpaceX
In 2006, SpaceX won a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Phase 1 contract to show that the company can take cargo to the ISS; The contract had a possible option for crew flight.<ref>Dennis Stone, "NASA's Approach to Commercial cargo and Crew Transportation, Acta Astronautica 63, No. 1-4 (2008):192-97.</ref name="SpaceX presser 20060818"></ref> This contract, designed by NASA to provide "seed money" through Space Act Agreements for developing new space opportunities, NASA paid SpaceX $396 million to work on the cargo configuration of the Dragon spacecraft, while SpaceX spent more than $500 million to develop the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. These Space Act Agreements have been shown to have saved NASA millions of dollars in development costs, making rocket development ~4-10 times cheaper than if produced by NASA alone.