The space program of the 1960s, culminating with the moon landings, seems like a far greater achievement to me than what SpaceX is doing, adjusted for the state of the art.
Nasa was spending close to 5% of the federal budget back then, about $35-40 billion per year in today's dollars. The space program cost hundreds of billions.
spaceX has done it by raising less than $1.5 billion total
It helps drive the costs down when you're not inventing the entire field basically from scratch. Not saying what they've accomplished isn't impressive but it's very much a 'standing on the soldiers of giants' situation.
> spaceX has done it by raising less than $1.5 billion total
NASA has itself given SpaceX more than that. Wikipedia says SpaceX has taken $5 billion from NASA, with over $1 billion more from US defense contracts.
