Depends on how you measure "behind". If you measure it by "times been to the moon" SpaceX sure is behind.

Less money? Less motivation? Less talent? The number of factors that contribute to success are unmeasurable, what a silly question.

Let's be objective: SpaceX has radically lowered the cost to get to Earth orbit, and commands a majority of the worldwide launch market. They are simply more efficient than other launch providers, so much so that they are branching out into global communications (StarLink) to capture more revenue (global comms is 10x the market size of the launch market). They don't need to go to the Moon to succeed. There is no market to get to the Moon unless nation states make one. Musk is building his own market for Mars logistics demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

> SpaceX's market share increased rapidly. In 2016, SpaceX had 30% global market share for newly awarded commercial launch contracts, in 2017 the market share reached 45%, and 65% in 2018.

Tesla, according to the opinion of a single auto industry expert, has a 7 year head start against legacy automakers [1]. They sell every vehicle they build, and combined, legacy automakers have shed almost 40k jobs in the last year as they attempt to transition to building EVs to compete against Tesla.

A reasonable person might conclude these metrics indicate an achievement of some level of success.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/27/auto-experts-tesla-has-...

I don't disagree that SpaceX has been successful. I just disagree that this trial and error methodology is some radical new thinking from Musk—it's not.

Nobody says he has invented trial end error, but every single person that worked in aerospace would tell you that they simply don't work like the other companies in many ways.

And with the Starship, they have gone to an extreme that even for SpaceX seems crazy.

There are tons and tons of interviews and podcasts with experienced people who worked there. Listing to those that came over from NASA is specially interesting.