"It's really only the ascent phase (including an escape system) and the descent phase where additional work is needed," Musk said. "We already are required to carry biological cargo from the space station and return it to Earth -- things like plants and rodents and various life science experiments." If the government is prepared to move quickly, Dragon could be ready to transport its first crew to the station in 2011, Musk added. The company would match the government funds with its own $300 million investment. "The alternative is NASA spend $70 million approximately a seat on the Soyuz, and if you have six to eight astronauts going to station a year, you're talking about a half-billion dollars per year going to the Russians for several years. In the meantime, all the manned spaceflight people who are at the Cape (Cape Canaveral, Fla., where the country's primary space launch site is located) are getting decommissioned because there's no manned spaceflight taking place," Musk said. "The logic just seems overwhelming," he added. "It just seems like a no-brainer to me."
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