SpaceX didn’t have a successful launch at the time let alone a proven system, but they had plenty to show. Further they where one of 2 winners splitting the initial 800M budget for COTS with Rocketplane Kistler. They are remembered because Rocketplane Kistler failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketplane_Kistler
Substantial amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, are being provided to the private companies. If SpaceX continues on along its current path, it will have received approximately $1.2 billion in government money from the collective programs. I’m rounding, but with this recent $400-plus million award under CCiCap [Commercial Crew integrated Capability], that brings the total SpaceX funding to something around $1.2 billion, maybe a little more.
That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive, especially since in testimony last year the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, indicated that the private funding involved was not more than $200 million. $100 million of his own money that he had brought in from a prior enterprise, and then he alluded to the fact—I’m trying to recall the testimony on an ad hoc basis, but the point is that there’s less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion of government capital.
(Michael Griffin worked closely with Elon before SpaceX was founded at the Mars Society and worked on Brilliant Pebbles and DC-X which the Falcon 9 was based upon)
Given all that government money, it was a low risk private investment for Elon.
Fix cost government contracts can look really awesome when they work out, but they are not a 1:1 equivalent to private funding. Essentially what you need to look into is what percentage of that money was profit and assuming say a ~20% profit margin it works out to something like 200 million from the government and 200 million from private investments.
You can dig into the specifics but docking with the ISS involves stuff like the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Berthing_Mechanism
See APPENDIX 2, milestones 1-12: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/189228main_setc_nnj...
I remember this quite well--I was at NASA at the time of this contract award. It is also written up in the book Liftoff if you want to see for yourself.
The book Liftoff is mostly Eric Berger regurgitating an origin story Elon told him, not reality.
They were weeks away from not making payroll before they received customer down payments and bridge financing following the successful launch of Falcon 1.
This is all covered in Liftoff. It’s a good book; I recommend reading it.