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$1m sounds like peanuts for a bunch of R&D on a mass-market high-tech consumer product.
I'm guessing most of that money went to pay salaries, just like raising a $1M seed round in the Valley. Since Fisher invested their own money, it's hard to determine if the $1M was only used for the space pen. I would assume they didn't hire that many new engineers and simply allocated existing engineers to the space pen project. On the books it looks like $1M invested, but that amount might be significantly less.
Around $7 million in todays money.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+million+USD%2C++in+19...

Conversely, if you short out a panel due to conductive something and the spacecraft is lost due to the malfunction, it starts to look like maybe you should've invested more money in developing your flight instruments.

Space is a harsh environment - things sent up there need to be carefully considered.