Commercial Cargo and Spacecraft Development Plans by NASA, China, and Europe.

The European and Chinese space agencies have announced initiatives to hire private companies to deliver cargo to space stations in low-Earth orbit. The European Space Agency is putting up a total of 2 million euro to support two companies with preliminary design and fundraising efforts, while China's space agency is offering to pay no more than $17.2 million per ton of cargo delivered. However, both initiatives may struggle as they seem to be skipping the "COTS" phase of the program, during which NASA shared its expertise and provided a substantial amount of money.