http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjuvIlskUf4#t=7m20s Just look at Elon's excitement at the 9:36 mark of this video as well as all of SpaceX employee's enthusiasm. This was truly a huge success despite the challenging odds.

It's an amusing contrast of how Elon was like "Yeah that's pretty cool I guess." when director Jon Favreau based Iron Man on him and donated an Iron Man statue to SpaceX headquarters signed by the whole cast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CECAda_XCDU

I hope Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan will show their support for Elon now that the mission was a success, partly due to collaboration with NASA. This is also NASA's victory, really, since they can save millions in the future by contracting with an American company instead of relying on the Russians.

He must feel on top of the world turning around a successful mission in the face of being rejected by his heroes. I know I want to feel like that.

SpaceX so far has spent roughly a billion dollars developing the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and the unmanned Dragon capsule. They will spend a bit more developing the manned Dragon (a few hundred million) and are continuing to develop other hardware such as revisions of the Falcon 9 launcher (Block 2, and an upgraded version 1.1 with considerably greater payload), the Falcon Heavy launcher (with over 50 tonnes of payload, based on the Falcon 9 1.1 core), and a fully reusable Falcon 9 launcher as well as Dragon capsule.