Comment by tsimionescu
17 hours ago
The point was about Starship - it has never successfully flown with any amount of cargo. The 3 billion number from the poster before makes it clear they were only referring to Starship, not all of SpaceX.
SpaceX is an extremely successful space launch company, and Falcon 9 is the best we've ever had. It's just Starship that seems to be going much worse.
Falcon 9 was once in the same spot; simulator payloads (a wheel of cheese), years of delays, a bunch of smashed-up first stages and drone ships, etc. Even more so if you count the Falcon 1 failures.
Starship has already demonstrated several key things work - the new engines, catching the booster, and on-target intact reentry of the second stage, all for about as much money as a single SLS launch is projected to cost. (Thus far, they've only had one for $26B.)