SpaceX founder Elon Musk: We will get to the space station

Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO joined a panel of top NASA officials to announce clearance had been granted to a test flight mission tentatively scheduled for April 30. “I think it would be a mistake to put too much weight on this flight because there are hopefully going to be two more flights later this year to the space station, which will be almost identical configuration,” Musk said. “So if this one doesn’t succeed in getting to space station, I’m confident that one of the other two will. There should be no doubt about our resolve. We will get to the space station.” less Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO joined a panel of top NASA officials to announce clearance had been granted to a test flight mission tentatively scheduled for April 30. “I think it would be a mistake to put ... more Photo: KRISTI NIX Photo: KRISTI NIX Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close SpaceX founder Elon Musk: We will get to the space station 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

In the brave new world of commercial space travel, flying the first private spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) involves a $1 billion gamble. Now cleared for a possible April 30 launch, SpaceX is ready to roll the dice.

A panel of top NASA officials and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk outlined the mission and answered reporters’ questions at a Johnson Space Center press briefing Monday (April 16).

“I think we’ve got a pretty good shot. But it is worth emphasizing there is a lot that can go wrong in a mission like this because you’ve got to have the success of the rocket and then you’ve got to have the success of the spacecraft,” Musk said. “There’s no space station on the ground, so our work to date has been done by simulation and by approximating the circumstances that it will find in orbit and approaching the space station. I think it is important to appreciate that this is pretty tricky."

The mission involves launching the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which will power the Dragon capsule and 521 kilograms of cargo to the ISS. If all goes as planned, the capsule is scheduled to return and splash down in the Pacific Ocean with 660 kilograms of return cargo on about May 21.

The mission is extremely complex and is not guaranteed to be successful.

"The public out there, they may not realize that the space station is zooming around the Earth every 90 minutes, and it is going 17,000 miles an hour," Musk said.

"So you have got to launch up there and you've got to rendezvous and be backing into the space station within inches really, and this is something that is going 12 times faster than the bullet from an assault rifle. So it's hard. But, I think we’ve got a pretty good chance.”

In 2006, SpaceX was awarded a NASA contract worth up to $396 million to build a launch system and spacecraft capable of traveling to the space station. NASA has so far paid out approximately $381 million toward the project. Venture capital and investors contributed another $700 million. A large portion of the project was directly funded by Musk, who reportedly made a vast fortune in the Internet business as founder of Pay Pal.

“When the decision was made to retire the shuttle and continue our exploration program we very much would have liked to have purchased commercial services to resupply the space station. But those capabilities simply didn’t exist in the U.S. markets,” Alan Lindenmoyer, NASA's COTS program manager said.

“We had to learn to think like an investor. We wanted to place strategic financial investments to help stimulate the commercial space industry. Then we put some structure around those investments where we developed the program to have the companies demonstrate these capabilities, with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost effective services. We were looking to help lower the cost of access to space. We believed that would of course help us out and also be the key to opening up new markets in low earth orbit.”

NASA officials at the briefing remained cautious and emphasized the mission was a test flight.

“This is really a tough flight. What we’re asking them to go do on this demonstration flight is amazing,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations said. “When you look at all those things that have to work, and all the software has to interact, and the six computers and the 18 thrusters and all this has to work as a nice combined set to get into this precise box to get picked up by the (space station’s robotic arm) that is no easy task.”

Two additional test launches are tentatively scheduled later this year.

“I think it would be a mistake to put too much weight on this flight because there are hopefully going to be two more flights later this year to the space station, which will be almost identical configuration,” Musk said. “So if this one doesn’t succeed in getting to space station, I’m confident that one of the other two will. There should be no doubt about our resolve. We will get to the space station.”