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At this point, SpaceX is clearing its manifest, collecting so many customers that its manifest is continuing to grow with an ever longer back log of waiting time for new customers, and at this point plans to launch 15 rockets (according to their manifest) next year. Admittedly SpaceX claims that is only 15 rockets that will be delivered to the launch pads before January 2015, but that is incredibly ambitious. That is manufacturing over 150 new Merlin engines, or about 3-4 engines per week that need to be completed. In other words, a very real assembly line and mass production scales of efficiency.

If I'm counting engines right (10 for each Falcon 9, and 28 for the Heavy), their manifest of future missions through to the end of 2014 will require 178 Merlin and Merlin Vacuum engines.

SpaceX is in the red currently and if they can market the heck out their rockets to Wall Street (for funding) and undercut everyone, hopefully timing will allow them to get into the black.

They do great work, but either SpaceX will survive as much as OSC did in the 90's (they did well to start subcompanies) or they will flame out hard from debt.

SpaceX doesn't need funding, they have paying customers. And unless something goes terribly wrong, they are about to get a bunch more.

Space-X is now able to provide much of the capability of the space shuttle at much lower prices. (Each Space Shuttle launch ended up costing about $600 million.) Once the Falcon Heavy launches, they'll have the capability for even more lift to LEO.

Space-X even offers transportation of humans to low earth orbit. So far, NASA is the only buyer, but Space-X advertises it as a commercial service.

Space-X is now able to provide much of the capability of the space shuttle at much lower prices. (Each Space Shuttle launch ended up costing about $600 million.) Once the Falcon Heavy launches, they'll have the capability for even more lift to LEO.

Space-X even offers transportation of humans to low earth orbit. So far, NASA is the only buyer, but Space-X advertises it as a commercial service.

Here's the Space-X price list. Pricing is about half of other launchers.

Given that I don't have a few hundred million to drop on some satellite projects, I'm more interested in Space-X careers
 
And you have gotta love a company that advertises a position as:
 
  SOFTWARE DEVELOPER (BORG)

Here's the Space-X price list. Pricing is about half of other launchers.

Given that I don't have a few hundred million to drop on some satellite projects, I'm more interested in Space-X careers
 
And you have gotta love a company that advertises a position as:
 
  SOFTWARE DEVELOPER (BORG)

Here's the Space-X price list. Pricing is about half of other launchers.

Given that I don't have a few hundred million to drop on some satellite projects, I'm more interested in Space-X careers
 
And you have gotta love a company that advertises a position as:
 
  SOFTWARE DEVELOPER (BORG)

Space-X has four more Falcon 9 launches on their launch manifest for 2013, and ten scheduled for 2014. This is the first launch of the volume production version. Now they start cranking them out. With 9 engines per rocket, Space-X has to build over a hundred engines a year, which means they can set up an assembly line and get economies of scale.

Next year is the first flight of the Falcon Heavy, with 27 engines. Biggest rocket since the Saturn V.

Here's the Space-X price list. Pricing is about half of other launchers.

Think you might want to check (and cite) those numbers again. I think you've confused launch mass with cargo mass. http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/03/03/happy-berth-day - Dragon delivers 2300 lbs (1045 kg) cargo to ISS. http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/Publications/Cygnus_fact.pdf - Cygnus delivers 2000 kg (standard) or 2700 kg (enhanced) to ISS. The vehicles serve two very different purposes upon reentry. Dragon brings back garbage and recoverable cargo, Cygnus just takes out the trash. That's one of the reasons that Cyngus carries a much greater payload to the ISS. So if you are going to do any kind of back-of-the-envelope calculation about which one is a better value for NASA, then you have to include the value of bringing the wanted & unwanted cargo back versus disposal. Your argument reminds me of the old "which is better, Mac or PC" arguments we used to have in the 20th Century. The answer is "two players are always better than one." Now, how can we extend that analogy to SLS ... "which is better, Mac, PC, or IBM/370 running MVS?" Hmm, IBM/370 may still be considered a lightweight compared to SLS... And what exactly do you mean by "stuck in orbit?" A functioning space vehicle that maneuvers and allows another visiting vehicle (Soyuz) to rendezvous, before making its own approach, hardly sounds "stuck."

Might as well announce that you're going to lower gravity...

That's his other company.

This is fantastic news, but I wonder why the capacity is so small. TFA says it carried a little less than 600kg of cargo up. The SpaceX Dragon can carry 10 times that amount (literally - 6,000 kg) and it has a return capability of up to 3,000 kg.

After beefing up their vehicle with a second version they plan to be able to deliver 2,700 kg. So best case scenario they can't even carry half the cargo of the Dragon. That's a pretty big disparity.

MarsOne is scam perpetuated by people who have no idea what they're doing. They can't put anyone on Mars (intact anyway) for anywhere close to $6 billion. The entire company is a joke designed to sell tshirts and take donations to fund their team (which is full of artists and "communication specialists"). Just look at your own link and compare it to say: http://www.spacex.com/ Their website is far more Web 2.0 (donate here!, Facebook like here! Buy a tshirt here!), then it is technology related.

You know Elon Musk builds space ships right? Do you seriously think he didn't zoom his map in?

Check out section 4.4 Route.
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf

The proposed route imposes a max 0.5 g acceleration on the passengers.

You really should read the proposal. It's well written, and he addresses every non-political objection I've seen someone come up with.

The sad thing is that John Carmack has all but shut down Armadillo Aerospace, primarily due to a lack of funds. They had several projects which seemed to be doing pretty well and might have even started to earn some money to sustain the company, but the current recession has pretty much dried up any funds they were going to get from the entrepreneurs involved. It was always a skeleton crew anyway, but there are some signs of collapse as well.

On the other hand, if the American economy picks up again and real economic growth happens in both America and Europe, I would have to agree with you that the "New Space" companies are going to start really turning out some impressive things. I know Robert Bigelow is just waiting in the wings for a few companies to get their act together so he can start flying some space stations... and he has also booked a flight on a Falcon 9 (it is on the SpaceX manifest for 2015) in a couple years as insurance hoping that Elon will succeed as well.

What steam storage? The article seemed to say that air would be forced through skis at the bottom of the pods by an air compressor and thrust would be provided by magnets.

Oh there are more details here: http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf There is steam storage

Right now, the Falcon 9 carries 13 tonnes to LEO for 50 million... Pretty scary.

Hey dude, I think you are farting out of you mouth because Elon Musk' prick is stuck in your rectum due to the presence of a some amount of constipated feces.

Right now Falcon 9 carries 5 tons to LEO (of which only 0.5 ton is useful payload) for 133 million...talking about scary...scarily incompetent.

Nope. V1.1 which is the current launcher carries 13 tonnes and it costs 54 million.
Sadly, idiots like you prove that 'No child left behind' is a failure.

Meanwhile, Space-X is building the Falcon Heavy, with twice the payload of the Space Shuttle. The Falcon Heavy is three Falcon-9s. The Falcon-9, which is in current production and has been launched successfully several times, uses 9 Merlin engines. The Merlin engine is in current production, and about 400 a year are being manufactured. The first Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for this year. For an actual commercial customer.

So why is NASA trying to build a big booster again?

No, it's not. Ok, here's more evidence.

http://www.spacex.com/careers.php?jvi=oe2HWfwD,Job

"Our Flight Software Group currently has opportunities developing software for embedded flight hardware using Linux and VxWorks as well as ground simulation software using Linux. "

They are HIRING people with VxWorks experience and say they use it in their current job descriptions.

They use Linux, obviously. But they also use VxWorks for some mission critical RT applications. You said "they don't use it at all". You are wrong.

So now we've got rockets that run Linux... I'm shocked, shocked! that no one has stooped low enough to say this yet, so let me be the first to stoop...

Can you imagine having a Beowulf Cluster of THESE?!

Or don't RTFA, and instead actually do some research first.

http://www.spacex.com/downloads/dragonlab-datasheet.pdf

Search for "Flight Software" (the most mission critical RT bit, of course).

Actually TFA said "Dragon is the only station freighter that makes return trips", but that doesn't necessarily mean reusability.

The SpaceX site claims it is reusable, but I don't know if it actually has been reused to date.
The last picture on the above linked page shows the condition of the returned vehicle. Its significantly crispy that it might be less expensive
to simply build a new one. Especially for manned missions coming later.

There is a comparison of cargo vehicle on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_space_station_cargo_vehicles
None mention re-useability explicitly.

That would be 2014 according to their launch manifest:

http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php

And, no, I am not sick of him. I want to sell him a seed factory to put on Mars to produce necessities for colonists. Therefore I want his near-term projects to succeed:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Danielravennest/SFP/Report

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ All thrusters now operational.

Supplies, equipment and medical samples are coming back. Can't find any more specific details...

From http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ just now...

There's been plenty of research done regarding collection of solar via orbiting power stations, and relaying it back to Earth via microwaves. Yes, there probably are some downsides regarding the energy balance of the planet (if you do enough of it), and after a while you'll cover the Earth in receivers or push the power of the microwaves to a level to cook us all, but by that point we'll all be dead anyway from other causes.

With the recent burse of companies pushing into space, this is no longer a fantasy.

Acording to this; http://www.spacex.com/downloads/dragonlab-datasheet.pdf VxWorks

The 1st launch where they were going to dock the Dragon Capsule to the ISS failed. The launch was aborted after "Liftoff" was proclaimed. Indeed, with a solid rocket booster that couldn't have been shut off, the launch couldn't have been aborted a second after liftoff, it would have had to try to soldier on with the mission, or maybe execute a planned crash / destructive abort procedure; However, liquid fuel was used, so they just cut off the fuel, and tried again another day...

Update: May 19, 2012

Today’s launch was aborted when the flight computer detected slightly high pressure in the engine 5 combustion chamber. We have discovered root cause and repairs are underway.

... the next launch succeeded, and they historically docked with the ISS. On the following resupply mission an engine failed mid flight, but the liquid fuel engines can be shut down mid-flight, routing fuel to the remaining engines, so that's what happened.

October 8, Update

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event.

You see? It's not that the engines are less fail proof, it's that they have better fail safes.

P.S. SpaceX, please tell your webmaster to replace those <strong> tags with the preceding named anchor tags, keep the "blue smallText" class (though you should name the class semantically, not describe what they do, that's just as bad as per element style attributes! Derp!), and set the href attribute to be "#" + the name attribute, eg: href="#Update100712" to create self referential links; That way instead of delving into the source of your HTML to get at the anchor names I can right click the link and copy the URL when I want to link to the pertinent places in that giant list of updates (also, might want to break them into smaller pages, maybe by month?) Alternatively: Fire that moron, and I'll do it for you for free.

The 1st launch where they were going to dock the Dragon Capsule to the ISS failed. The launch was aborted after "Liftoff" was proclaimed. Indeed, with a solid rocket booster that couldn't have been shut off, the launch couldn't have been aborted a second after liftoff, it would have had to try to soldier on with the mission, or maybe execute a planned crash / destructive abort procedure; However, liquid fuel was used, so they just cut off the fuel, and tried again another day...

Update: May 19, 2012

Today’s launch was aborted when the flight computer detected slightly high pressure in the engine 5 combustion chamber. We have discovered root cause and repairs are underway.

... the next launch succeeded, and they historically docked with the ISS. On the following resupply mission an engine failed mid flight, but the liquid fuel engines can be shut down mid-flight, routing fuel to the remaining engines, so that's what happened.

October 8, Update

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event.

You see? It's not that the engines are less fail proof, it's that they have better fail safes.

P.S. SpaceX, please tell your webmaster to replace those <strong> tags with the preceding named anchor tags, keep the "blue smallText" class (though you should name the class semantically, not describe what they do, that's just as bad as per element style attributes! Derp!), and set the href attribute to be "#" + the name attribute, eg: href="#Update100712" to create self referential links; That way instead of delving into the source of your HTML to get at the anchor names I can right click the link and copy the URL when I want to link to the pertinent places in that giant list of updates (also, might want to break them into smaller pages, maybe by month?) Alternatively: Fire that moron, and I'll do it for you for free.

SpaceX does provide 'some' cargo return capability. http://www.spacex.com/crs1.php

Of course it is nothing compared to space shuttle, but when is the last time that a space shuttle bring back anything huge? Or, has it ever done so?

It's in AviationWeek but behind a paywall, you can find the link in SpaceX website, for actual Chinese launch price you can check the PDF from FAA which you probably already have seen: LM4B=$50M, LM3B=$60M, LM3A=$50M, considering the payload capability of LM3A/3B/4B, I think the statement is not far fetched.

Of course your price for Atlas V is correct, so yeah the price difference is that big, yet.

SpaceX is not where the action is happening. If you think the only private spaceflight is SpaceX, you simply don't know what is going on.

Check out Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, Scaled Composites, Bigelow Aerospace, Blur Origin, and XCor (just to name a few... I know I'm missing a bunch). Even with SpaceX their flight manifest has a majority of the flights booked for commercial projects that have nothing to do with the federal government.

I guess the saying goes that if it is raining money, you haul out the buckets and grab what you can, so doing business with the government is a prudent thing if they are throwing money about. None the less it isn't even the government that is the concern.

I'd also have you listen in on hearings with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. There are a number of members of congress that are incredibly hostile to commercial spaceflight and are openly trying to stop commercial enterprises from happening at all in space or are incredulous that commercial activities could even happen at all. Quite literally the owners of these private enterprises are telling the government to get out of their way and not mess with their businesses.

What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.

That link is about the still non-existent Falcon 9 v1.1, that's why I'm very dubious: it's just trash talking, smoke and mirrors. They said the Falcon 1 would have been the first reusable and cheap launch system, it wasn't; then it was the time of Falcon 5, it was never built; then NASA came to the rescue and fully funded Falcon 9, neither this time it was reusable, however they say Falcon 9 v1.1 will be: I'll believe it when I see it.

Just to point out, according to the original sheets the planned launch cost for Falcon 9 was $35-55 m for 8.5-9 t (2007), in 2010 it was already $50-56 m, now it's "under $60 million".

So being generous, i.e. SpaceX 2010 prices vs. PSLV 2012 prices:
Falcon 9 v1.0 | 8.5t-9.0t | $56 million | 6.22-7 million $/t
PSLV | 3.25 t | $17 million | 5.23 million $/t
Russian and Ukrainian launches are still cheaper. I don't know about Chinese launches, but I'd bet their cheaper as well...

What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.

Russia has actually raised their launch prices in part because of the demand for them is outstripping their supply and they have a backlog on production at the moment. They are simply being capitalists, which is a good thing too but sort of shoots your theory out of the water. Name a specific launcher if you think it can be more competitive.

The Ariane V vehicle has a launch cost of $120 million and puts about 15 metric tons into orbit, or about $8 million per metric ton. In other words, it is literally twice the cost as the Falcon 9. It can put up a slightly heavier payload at the moment, but that is something SpaceX is trying to fix with their Falcon Heavy rocket.

If you want to find the source from Chinese space officials who toured the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, California and said they couldn't compete, do some Google searching on the topic. I won't bother but it was widely reported at the time including a post here on Slashdot when it happened.

Pricing

SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing for its launch services. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.

PAYLOAD PRICE
Up to 6.4 ton to GTO $83M*
Greater than 6.4 ton to GTO $128M*

*Paid in full standard launch prices for 2012. Please contact us for details at sales@spacex.com

btw, GTO = Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit

A quick look through their launch manifest tells a very different story.

Space X is posting updates here: http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ , unfortunately there is no live video feed, only status updates.

According to the GAO, the average cost of an Atlas V launch this year is $200 million. That's up somewhat from years past, but not radically higher. So for years now, that's been the cost of a launch. Talking about per ton doesn't really mean much because you couldn't select a lower capacity launch vehicle for less money--there wasn't one available. A Falcon 9 today costs $54 million complete, including insurance. (Since the government typically self-insures, presumably it could be less for an NOAA launch.) So while it's an order of magnitude, it's not actually a factor of 10. A factor of 4, more or less.

Still a very significant number. Yes, the number you quote as reasonable IS reasonable. But before the Falcon 9 was proven successful, it was not an available price. The only available price (from an American launch company) was 4X that.

If you missed it, you can watch the recording at http://www.spacex.com/webcast/, which in my opinion, was the best way of viewing it live.

On the other hand, Elon Musk is serious about it, and his next launch of a resupply to the ISS happens tonight. Be sure to watch. If it blows up this time (it didn't last time), then I'll shut up. But chances are it won't, and SpaceX will keep steaming along.

Maybe, just maybe, a government won't be involved this time. (80% of SpaceX's current launch manifest is commercial. Only 20% of the money they're currently expecting to collect will come from governments.)

Virgin Galactic is doing this because there is a market for it. As far as general business & science, I refer you to exhibit B, SpaceX, that is not catering to rich tourists, but instead investing on equipment that will eventually allow them to do the things you mention by developing new extraterrestrial resources.

As far as letting people starve and die without medicine... you want to take away more of the rich people's money so they won't spend it on space vacations? That would put all those spaceship builders out of work (and their suppliers, etc.).

SpaceX quotes their launch price for the Falcon 9 at $54 Million. All the sources I can find for the Atlas V put the launch cost at $138 Million. Though I couldn't find a price listed on their website, which is really understandable if you think about it.

How heavy is "heavy lift"? SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy on the roadmap. Supposed to lift over double the capacity of the Shuttle.

Considering the shuttle launched something like a quarter as much as the Saturn V, launching twice as much isn't really saying a lot.

But it also avoids the biggest problem of the SLS: you spend billions and billions and billions of dollars developing something that flies perhaps a dozen times over the next decade, so every single launch starts with a base cost of a billion dollars or more when you spread the development costs over a tiny number of launches. The Falcon Heavy would be based on the Falcon 9, so most of the development costs are already paid for.

Even if it's another entity besides NASA that builds a heavy lift rocket, they are going to need somewhere to launch it from.

NASA are the only entity likely to build a heavy lift rocket in the near future because it makes no financial sense. And even if SpaceX did build one, they'd be unlikely to pay for NASA infrastructure to launch it.

How heavy is "heavy lift"? SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy on the roadmap. Supposed to lift over double the capacity of the Shuttle. Will launch from the Cape on a Nasa pad. According to their website, only the Saturn V delivered more mass to orbit. According to my recollection a couple of Soviet rockets were bigger too.

It looks like the Alliant/Boeing SLS could do double the work of the Falcon Heavy, if it ever gets built. Projected costs for SLS are even more massive than its payload - at least when compared to SpaceX numbers. They are quoting $138 million to GTO, while current estimates place the cost of a base model SLS at $1.6 billion (not including program development costs or launch costs). So if the SLS is what defines "heavy lift" then I suppose you are right. Only a government would shell out that kind of dough. (a quick look at wikipedia says that NASA estimates total program costs through the first 4 launches at $41 billion - so nearly 10x the cost of launching with SpaceX. - of course you do get that extra 25% more payload for the cost)

Billions. http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20081223 "HAWTHORNE, CA – December 23, 2008 – NASA today announced its selection of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft for the International Space Station (ISS) Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) contract award. The contract is for a guaranteed minimum of 20,000 kg to be carried to the International Space Station. The firm contracted value is $1.6 billion and NASA may elect to order additional missions for a cumulative total contract value of up to $3.1 billion."

Elon Musk's primary goal in founding SpaceX is to go to Mars and I would give him as good a chance of acheiving it as anyone.

The shuttle being decommisioned improves the odds of going to Mars, not reduces them. It was a money sink and it promoted the mind set of being stuck in LEO because it was stuck in LEO. It had also acquired so many restrictions for safety issues it was barely doing its vastly reduced mission. It had turned in to a pork barrell project to make jobs at NASA, Boeing and Lockheed, not do anything worthwhile in space (outside of servicing Hubble).

Intelsat signed the first commercial contract for Falcon Heavy yesterday and if SpaceX can successfully build and launch those, and even better recover and reuse them, they will be a far more valuable tool in leaving LEO and going to Mars than Shuttle every would be.

I personally dont think bone loss and eyesight are going to be show stopping issue for Mars. Radiation exposure in deep space and on the surface of Mars is the serious issue unless you can get a ship with enough shielding and propulsion to move the shielding.

Me personally and I'm sure lots of others would volunteer for a Mars mission even if it was a one way mission and life shortening. To me the ideal mission to Mars is a one way trip with a permenent stay, and a logistics train to support a permenent colony. The zero G issues are more a problem returning to 1G and earth than they would be staying in 1/3 G on Mars which isn't as bad as zero G. A one way trip also saves a long return trip in zero G to get back to Earth. Even if zero G is a problem you can build a larger ship and spin it enough to get 1/3 G. That is an engineering challenge, not a show stopping issue.

I'd have to agree with you on this issue. The official SpaceX manifest doesn't suggest anything about USAF launches at all (that may be legitimate in terms of trying to keep official secrets, but it isn't listed there). There are technically scheduled four more Falcon 9 launches for this year, with OrbComm claiming to be the next customer stepping up to the bat even before NASA gets another run to the ISS with another Dragon spaceship.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg though. That would be amazing by itself. Such a launch also couldn't happen unnoticed.

The have a video. http://spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=0

It's all PR. I'll call it Commercial when they launch from their facility and have a paypal for me to pay for each KG of payload I want to send up in LEO.

Ask, and ye shall receive

Seriously, this has been happening already. I'm sure Nanoracks will accept most major credit cards and PayPal if you insist. They charge about $25,000 for a "1 unit" or "1 U" rack mount system with a few variables depending on the mass of the system and a few other factors that you can negotiate on the website. At the moment their customers are all going to the International Space Station, and included in the contract allows you to have an astronaut perform in-orbit servicing of your device if necessary. Telemetry is a part of the package and you can have the racks returned to you after being in space for awhile (for an additional cost).

Several of these racks have gone up to the International Space Station already, and a few of them are even on this particular flight of the Falcon 9 with the COTS 2+ mission. If you want to open up your bank account and send them some money, I'm sure they'll take it. I just hope you have something useful to do with that space.

SpaceX also has a program called "Dragon Lab" which offers a similar kind of service where a Dragon capsule can stay up for nearly a year with pressurized cargo in the interior. SpaceX has two schedule flights at the moment on their manifest, and is currently selling space on them to anybody who wants to put something into that vehicle. If you want to put something on there (even just a single kilogram package) I'm sure that Gwynne Shotwell will take your e-mail (gwynne at spacex dot com) and offer you a price to put a package on there. PayPal payments for this service are certainly accepted as well.

Just look at who founded PayPal BTW.... you would hope that Elon would take payments from that company :)

Dragon is designed to be a manned vehicle though.
Supports up to 7 passengers in Crew configuration "

They just carry the Falcon 9 to the pad by pieces on trucks: http://www.spacex.com/assets/img/122908-oversized.jpg

The Falcon 9 pieces are built in California, tested at Texas, then sent to Florida for final integration and launch.