So, hmm, we wants to send people around the moon, a year and a half from now, with a rocket he never tested and with a capsule that never flew?
I expect half of the directors of SpaceX to resign in the next two days...
This is really premature. I'd be surprised if they do this by 2020.
And if people are willing to pay the money and take the risk, why not?
Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?
e: I realize you are saying none of this reduces the risk of the rocket exploding but at some point that doesn't matter because there's never going to be an absolute guarantee. The mitigation of risk that the rocket explodes is the further test flights the new rocket will complete before a manned mission to the moon.
Two lost rockets in a year is a lot better than previous years.
Uh no.. they're losing MORE rockets now than before, mostly because the rockets are getting bigger and more powerful - and they have the Heavy versions coming.
Consider that 2 of their last 13 rockets exploded.. that's not a good track record. Compare that to ULA, which hasn't had an explosion over 100 Atlas/Delta launches.
Two losses in two years is a lot better than the very early days when they lost their first three Falcon 1s in a row, but worse than the early years of Falcon 9 where the only failure was a single engine out that didn't hurt the primary payload, and is certainly not a good track record overall.
I mean, I'm half joking, I believe that it is a possible objective, as much as it is possible to manufacture 500k Model 3s a year.. next year. Possible, but a monumental effort and something on which Musk strongly disagrees even with the top managers in his own companies.
This does not seem so impossible. A couple of delays will happen, but all in all, there is no fundamental problem.
Plus the actual evidence for Elons companies being far worse then anybody else is not really there.
Plus, its not like all those educated people that work at SpaceX would live in the gutter if they can't do the job.
You know (if you're a developer) when you're working on a very exciting piece of code that will do wonderful stuff, and you have clear in your head what you're doing and how to do it, and think "it'll take me an hour, can't wait to see it working" and then at 4 AM you're still there, always in the same state of mind, with half of your brain asleep and the other half still perfectly focused on the result? Yep, I think that's Elon Musk. Still in the splendour of his early twenties :)
He has also been clear that he had three goals:
1) Expanding solar power use.
2) Popularizing electric vehicles.
3) Making human life multi-planetary.
I am paraphrasing and perhaps understating his desired level of success.