It's also worth mentioning that SpaceX is possibly even significantly cheaper than their commercial competitors. If you look up the other company mentioned in the article, Orbital Science Corporation it says they have a contract with NASA for 8 launches for 1.9 Billion to do the same thing. SpaceX has a contract for 1.6 Billion for 12 launches. That's 50% more flights for 15% less cost.
I don't know what that means, but Wikipedia says that Space Science Corporation's vehicle can cary a "2,000kg / 2700kg" "delivered payload" and SpaceX's Dragon a 6,000kg "launch payload" so they win there too by more than double.
Wikipedia has 9900kg to LEO for the Falcon 9 block 1 and 10450kg to LEO for Falcon 9 block 2 (both from Canaveral).
To GTO those numbers are 2400kg and 4680kg.
The "Launch Payload" of the Dragon spacecraft (6000kg) appears to be approximately the Mass to LEO of the block 2 (10450kg) minus the mass of an empty Dragon spacecraft (4200kg).
