At the moment, if you want to fly to the International Space Station, your only option is to hitch a lift on one of Russia's 1970s-vintage Soyuz space capsules. That may not be the case for too much longer, with NASA announcing that it has approved the first milestone for the manned version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.
Executed under a Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, the milestone consists of a successful Certification Baseline Review of SpaceX's plans for the manufacturing, launch, flight, and recovery of its Crew Dragon (AKA Dragon v.2) and the Falcon 9 v.1.1 rocket, which will propel it into orbit.
One of 23 agreements and milestones under the space agency's Commercial Crew Program approved this year, it is the latest step in developing privately owned and operated US spacecraft to ferry crews to the ISS. These spacecraft are currently being developed independently by SpaceX and Boeing. When certified, the two spacecraft will be able to travel to and from the ISS carrying up to seven passengers or a mixture of passengers and cargo. Being capable of remaining on station for 210 days, they will double as lifeboats; allowing ISS crews to be larger than facilitated by the three-person Soyuz.
According to NASA, SpaceX and Boeing will have to certify that their spacecraft and launching systems can be integrated, launched from a site in the United States, dock with the ISS, and that their systems' performance meets specifications. If all goes as planned, the Crew Dragon will make a test flight with at least one test pilot on board ... though that is still a few years away.
Source: NASA
@Curly Oldfield The CCtCap stuff was originally supposed to be ready for flight in 2015, however NASA signed a deal with the Russians to use Soyuz through 2017. It's probably a good thing, too. With The Antares explosion a couple months ago people are understandably a bit skittish about putting people on relatively untested rockets. SpaceX hasn't had anything remotely similar, but they're also well behind schedule on several things. In January they said they were going to fly the Falcon Heavy around November. By March they refined their plan to late 2014 to early 2015. At this point it's not looking good for early 2015, they still haven't launched their latest cargo mission, that's scheduled for early-mid January. Their focus seems to be on re-usable rockets which they've always planned to be part of Falcon Heavy, so perhaps that's taking them longer than they expected.