[nradov]

Bill Stone is a skilled engineer but anyone who knew about him from scuba diving circles wouldn't have taken that seriously. He is infamous for over promising, under delivering, and taking excessive unnecessary risks. So not really comparable to Elon Musk in any meaningful way.

[marvin]

Not to mention that there still isn't a cheap launch vehicle available that's cheap enough for lunar exploration to be feasible for a private initiative. SpaceX themselves could probably send a probe to the Moon soon if they wanted to; the Falcon 9 is likely a lot cheaper than what SpaceX charge their customers.