I find this schedule very very unlikely. No humans have flown in the Dragon at all yet.
Also none on any of SpaceX:s rockets. There have been lots of launch and pad failures.
I'm cheering for SpaceX for doing more towards spacefaring, but I'm very skeptical and think this will, at least, end up being negative PR to them, and, at worst, a lot more.
They had failures, but they're going forward. They launched again recently, and nailed the landing, again.
That said, I suppose we need to apply Elon Time coefficient here, and the Moon mission will end up being in 2019 / 2020. Still, I'm very excited, because for the first time in my life, the possibility of humans going to the Moon again within my lifetime feels actually real.
I'm the biggest fan of Elon there is, I'm pretty sure, but this still makes me nervous.
The timescale is bullshit-- the past two failures have both pushed things back a ways, and at this point I'm not optimistic there won't be more failures soon (although I strongly believe they'll succeed completely in the long term regardless). Things would have to go perfectly for this timescale to actually happen.
But what really makes me nervous is the thought of it going wrong and people dying. That would be pretty terrible. I feel like they need to do a lot more testing before they can send anyone around the moon in a mere 18-20months. That's just too soon. F9 is still having confusing failures after years in service. Falcon Heavy hasn't even flown once yet, nor Dragon 2.
"What if it's late," "What if someone dies", "It has to go perfectly or else." Mate there's no reason to slow down or criticize science and engineering for being late, having a death, or riding the razor's edge. Just get shit done. That's all that matters, this kind of internet fear-mongering is absolutely detrimental, even if there are huge risks involved in the process. We're not going to mess up the planet, but nay-sayers will absolutely slow us down.
"We'll do amazing things tomorrow!" and "We'll do amazing things the day after tomorrow!" are still amazing things; Musk timelines just come pre-Hofstadter'd.
I'm cheering for SpaceX for doing more towards spacefaring, but I'm very skeptical and think this will, at least, end up being negative PR to them, and, at worst, a lot more.