This. COTS was critical. Space Act Agreements are how things get done and optimizing for fixed priced, milestone based SAAs has been great for all "routine" things that NASA doesn't have to do extensive novel R&D to make happen, things like transportation, which is all space launch is these days.
SpaceX lives because of COTS and that's great. But that's also a signal that space launch is boring and was boring even back in 2005. It's commodity infrastructure and SpaceX, unlike Boeing and others, has a workable commodity style approach so they're eating everyone's lunch. Then SpaceX developed reusability because of its Mars ambitions and re-usable Falcon sealed the deal on industry dominance. No one can touch SpaceX's ~$20M F9 launch cost so SpaceX gobbles up any contracts that aren't locked down by law.
> that's also a signal that space launch is boring and was boring even back in 2005
It wasn’t boring so much as gated. If anything, nobody recognised it had become a commodity outside a couple crazy dudes in Hawthorne and West Texas. The majors still talked about it like they were doing dark magic.
