NASA awards SpaceX the contract that saved it

On 23 December 2008 — just weeks after Falcon 1 reached orbit and at the depth of the global financial crisis — NASA awarded SpaceX a Commercial Resupply Services contract worth about $1.6 billion for a minimum of 12 cargo flights to the International Space Station.

The timing could not have been more critical. SpaceX and Tesla were both nearly out of money that winter; Musk has called late 2008 the worst period of his life. The NASA contract, a fixed-price deal where SpaceX was paid only for delivering results, provided both validation and the cash to build Falcon 9 and Dragon.

It also proved a then-controversial idea: that NASA could buy transportation as a commercial service rather than owning and operating every rocket itself. That model went on to save US taxpayers billions and to seed an entire commercial spaceflight industry.