> every other launch provider in the world considered it a ridiculous goal

VTVL was a thing before SpaceX

> almost certainly heavily influenced by Spacex

Blue Origin was founded almost 2 years before SpaceX

VTVL were mostly suborbital toys and demonstrators. None of the major launch providers were actively developing recoverable, orbital boosters. As for Spacex influencing Blue Origin, I mean that spacex has set the tone for for what is possible and this has almost certainly helped inspire and drive Blue Origin's products.

ULA announced Vulcan's (partial) reusability before SpaceX landed a rocket, and I imagine they had been working on that for some time before it was announced. Granted, SpaceX certainly lit a fire under them to make some changes and bring costs down with Vulcan

Look at it this way - without SpaceX, most of the people working at SpaceX responsible for planning and executing the project would have been employed at the other launch companies.

Unless you think that Musk is a once in a generation rocket engineering genius directly responsible for designing their reusable systems, it stands to reason that they would have been invented anyways (but probably more slowly).

I honestly think that no one who has followed SpaceX since the early days can hold this view.

The 'oldspace' industry was so absolutely antagonistic and dismissive of reusable rocketry, there's no doubt in my mind that it would not have been pursued. The whole idea was associated with the Shuttle, widely considered to be an albatross for NASA.

Those young engineers you mention would have vanishingly little influence on development of any new rocket program in a deeply bureaucratic, ossified system. Who even are these 'other' rocket companies developing rockets? ULA is the product of government contractors simply supporting Atlas and Delta. Until Bruno, there was no real possibility of a new rocket program. There's Ariane, Roscosmos, China, and India, so mostly impossible for US citizens. It's very likely Ariane would not even be developing a new rocket if it wasn't for the specter of SpaceX.

The most important thing to understand is that rocket development wasn't progressing. It was excruciatingly stagnant, entirely dependent on the government to take the initiative, and subject to constant political muddling.

Were there other launch companies hiring engineers to do what Spacex did? Put another way, while the engineers are certainly talented and skilled, without a company hiring them and directing them in the same direction, they would not have developed the skills and careers that they did. Had one of these engineers been hired by ULA for example, they would have probably been far more constrained than they were at Spacex.

Musk created the environment and goals that let these engineers achieve incredible things. Without that environment, I don't see these engineers having the same accomplishments.