Actual goal of Elon Musk is to send someone to Mars, but since seems far reaching goal for most people and since they might call him crazy, he is sticking with near space for now. Do not be surprise when he starts talking about Mars.
He talks about Mars quite publicly already and various of SPaceX's corporate videos contain CGI dragon capsules landing on mars.
Also he's not 'sticking with near space for now' to avoid being called crazy as you imply, he's sticking to near-space now because you have to get that capability working and reliable so you can build on it for going further afield. It's not a smoke screen, it's all quite consistent with a road-map to mars.
