I would have to imagine that all four bidders presented plans with varying risk and cost which meet the requirements. Since NASA had a mandate to pick multiple winners there were probably two winning strategies, be low cost or be low risk.

I's speculate that Boeing presented the low risk route--nobody doubts they can meet the requirement if they get paid enough. I'd imagine that SpaceX presented the lost cost bid, probably viewing their bid as more of a subsidy for work and risks they are undertaking regardless.

SpaceX could have massively underbid Boeing in their proposal. I'm no rocket scientist so I honestly don't know how reasonable that conjecture is until either company says more.

EDIT: Listening to the follow up questions on NASA HQ UStream Feed the following questions and answers were asked (both questions and answers are paraphrased by me, I can't type as quickly as they can speak):

Q: Why did Boeing receive more than SpaceX?

A: Both companies proposed costs for their proposals to acquire capabilities to fulfill the RFP, and the government accepted both.

Q: Why two rewards instead of one?

A: It was in the government's best interest.

It's pretty straight forward. SpaceX can do the same work with less money for a variety of reasons. And SpaceX has a capsule that has already flown in space and successfully docked with the ISS several times to deliver cargo. They are 'just' upgrading it to carry people. Boeing has not flow their capsule yet, they're playing catchup.

> What am I missing?

Boeing's advantage in years of experience extracting the most possible money from the government?

I rather suspect that it's simply because SpaceX needs less money to finalise their space flight capability. That's typically how government contracts work - suppliers make bids and the government chooses the winner based on price and other criteria. Presumably SpaceX's bid was lower than Boeing's.

Off topic: it's "making do", not "making due". Non American English speakers pronounce the two quite differently, so this is a really startling error for us...

Boeing is an old and slow shop that outsources a lot of its work (even the engines, they're from Russia). SpaceX is essentially a startup and does almost everything in house (even the engines, they're from California). SpaceX also charges much less than Boeing for satellite launches.

If they're cost-plus contracts, then it just means SpaceX can build capsules at nearly half the cost of Boeing.

There are more politics and shenanigans in these contracts than you can shake a stick at. I would read almost literally nothing into those numbers.

It's possible the two contracts don't meet the requirements in the same way or at the same level. There may be optional requirements which one company has promised to meet and the other hasn't, or requirements that require "at least X" where one company is promising 10% over X and the other is promising 30% over X.