SpaceX building reusable crew capsule

Musk said he thinks Dragon can be ready to enter service in 2009 — a full year before the shuttle is expected to conduct its last flight.

"I feel very confident about being able to offer NASA an ISS-servicing capability by 2009 and am prepared to back that up with my own funding," Musk said.

Dragon's initial test flights would be conducted from SpaceX's island launch facility in the Kwajalein Atoll, Musk said, with operational flights to be conducted from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Musk said SpaceX proposed several different configurations of Dragon in order to meet NASA's needs to deliver both pressurized and unpressurized cargo loads to the station and bring some materials back. He also proposed a crewed version capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to and from the station.

Musk indicated that he sees no problems meeting the aggressive timelines NASA has established under the COTS program.

"Development-schedule risk with Dragon is as much a function of NASA as it is SpaceX given all the ISS-visiting vehicle requirements, but I think we can get it done in another three and a half years," he said.

"It took SpaceX just over three years to build both a company and a rocket from scratch, including engines, structure, avionics, two launch sites [and to get through the] regulatory crud," he said. "If we hadn't been forced to go to Kwaj[alein], we would very likely have launched by now. As it is, total time from zero to launch will be just over three and a half years."

Musk, who started SpaceX in 2002 using the fortune he made selling his company PayPal to eBay that same year, has built a small satellite launcher dubbed the Falcon 1 that is being readied for its maiden flight from the Kwajalein Atoll site. SpaceX has scrubbed three attempts to launch the two-stage, liquid-kerosene-fueled rocket since late November and intends to make the next attempt March 20.

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