Alan Boyle reports that more than 20 companies made proposals for the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Demonstrations Contract :Private ventures vie to service space station: Old and new players respond to NASA’s call for orbital transport - MSNBC.com - Mar.20.06.

Michael Belfiore reports that Advent Launch Services, led by Jim Akkerman, submitted a COTS proposal: Advent going for COTS - Dispatches from the Final Frontier - Mar.17.06. (I'm keeping a list of companies that submitted COTS proposals.)

I'll note that Advent is another small company that has made solid progresss with methane propulsion: NASA to test Advent engine for methane future - Advent Launch Services - Oct.20.05.

NASA dropped methane propulsion from its CEV program requirements because, as I understand it, they didn't want any technology development uncertainties on the critical path for returning to the Moon. However, with several companies developing methane engines, it's hard to see how such technology could become a showstopper. It certainly didn't seem like one for Mr. Akkerman:

Working on his NASA pension with donated supplies and work space, Akkerman completed a 20,000 pound thrust methane/LOX engine for the orbital vehicle. NASA's Stennis Space Center has it now, to test modifications they're making to allow them to test methane-powered engines as well as hydrogen engines.

Akkerman tells me he built that engine for about 1,500 bucks, hand-crafting the parts for it himself. He was a propulsion engineer at NASA for 36 years before retiring, or "graduating," as he puts it, in 1999.

He says that to make the COTS requirements, he'll have to produce an engine that delivers 30,000 pounds of thrust, but he thinks he can boost the pressure on his existing engine to get that.

Jon Goff points to the fourth company to confirm that it submitted a COTS proprosal: Venturer Space COTS Proposal: The S-550 - Selenian Boondocks - Mar.16.06.

Here's the company announcement: Venturer Aerospace pursues NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract - Venturer Aerospace - Mar.15.06

As Jon says, Venturer Aerospace is led by long time alt.space proponent George William Herbert. The company's presentation (ppt) at the Space Access'05 meeting is available on their homepage.

March 3rd was the deadline for submission of proposals to NASA's COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Demonstration) program. (Ten hardcopies of each proposal were to be received by the 7th.) The winners will be announced on June 6th.

Over 90 companies expressed an interest in the solicitation and many of these either submitted proposals or supported proposals submitted by others. For example, according to this article, Spacehab supported two proposals.

As we have seen, SpaceX has released some details of the Dragon spacecraft in its proposal. I hope that proposals from the other participants will also soon start to be made public. It would be interesting simply to know how exactly how many proposals were submitted and by whom.

Note that according to the solicitation document, NASA may divvy up the money among several teams

It is anticipated that multiple SAAs [Space Act Agreements] will be executed, therefore the allocation of funding to individual participants will be based on the number of participants selected and the type of capabilities proposed. In order to maximize capability coverage, participants are expected to secure additional funds to supplement the NASA funding as shown above.

The funding starts with $50M for 2006 and then goes as $120M, $200M, $130M through 2009.

Seems to me that distributing the money to just the two strongest proposals would be the quickest route to operational hardware. Chopping up the funding too finely could mean that the companies will have difficulty progressing beyond prototyping, at least for those without substantial outside funding.
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BTW: Michael Mealling is requesting help in maintaining the COTS Watch site: COTSWatch Looking For Authors - Mar.6.06