Your comment seems to lack context.

There has been no space exploration program without missed deadlines and budget overruns.

Lots of space exploration projects have gone completely sideways.

In contrast, SpaceX has made advancements at an incredible rate and on a tighter budget than any comparable program. If there even is a comparable program any more!

China is moving fast, but far behind SpaceX at this point.

Russia's capabilities have stalled.

NASA's capabilities have dramatically regressed. Their current promises are for a rocket that costs something on the order of $1 billion per launch. That's a promise many would laud them for breaking!

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

-- Theadore Roosevelt

Edit: sentence structure

One can make legitimate criticisms without engaging in the flamewar style of "Elon Musk is a welfare queen", as the great-grandparent comment does.

That kind of unnecessarily inflammatory language distracts from serious discussion of criticisms.

I think a lot of people are frustrated about how so many idolize him to the point where anything he is involved in is immune to criticism.

I worry that the opposite problem also exists – that if one disagrees with some criticism of Elon Musk or one of his companies, one is sometimes then accused of "idolising him" or of viewing him as "immune to criticism".

I think the vast majority of SpaceX fans would agree there are valid criticisms of Elon Musk. A couple of obvious ones: (a) his timelines are usually overly optimistic – he delivers a lot, but he very often delivers it later (sometimes even a lot later) than he initially said he would; (b) sometimes he speaks off-the-cuff too much (especially on Twitter) and ends up saying things he (very likely) later regrets saying (such as the 'pedo guy' episode, or the 'taking Tesla private' episode)

> Least we forget they promised cheap international travel via rocket, without any safety mechanisms, that takes 40 minutes to get around the world, to start being operational next year.

No, they did not. The earliest date anyone put on that was Shotwell, who in 2018 said "within 10 years". So the deadline to miss is 2028.

I don't think that's particularly realistic either, at least for humans, but let's not invent even more wild estimates than what SpaceX puts out.

? I mean are we comparing it to the government's SLS. Or tech industries ability to obey deadlines?

Honestly really confused, Starlink hasn't been that behind the deadlines and the Space X launches have brought down space launch costs so not sure what exactly you're talking about.

My downvote was triggered by calling reusability a business mistake which I find ridiculous. It drives prices down (new business), beats competition (gain market share) while creating a positive precedent (less waste).

i disagree with the less waste argument. there is clearly a rebound effect here: by making the price cheaper and significantly increasing the mass that goes to orbit you eventually generate more waste.

They can land rockets on autonomous boats, for goodness sake.