Elon founded SpaceX in 2002. He said he wanted to build reusable, cost effective space platform where rocket boosters could land themselves and be refurbished with low turn-around times to fly multiple missions.

People laughed at the idea of a rocket that could land itself upright. And after countless tests that resulted in magnificent fiery failures and flops, a private American company is now responsible for launching crew and cargo to the ISS so we don't have to rely on Russia or ELA alone, and has more recently gone on to develop the largest rocket ever made.

In the 22 years since it's inception, SpaceX has designed it's own:

• Rockets
• Engines
• Rocket Propellant
• Satellites and base stations
• Bespoke robust communications network
• Ground support structure (including a moving robotic tower named "Mechanical")
• Crewed mission vehicle platform
• The world's biggest fucking rocket

Say whatever you want about his beliefs, his opinions, his shit takes-- point me to another company that has done even half of that in that amount of time, or had nearly as monumental of an impact on the global space industry and America's access to space in the last two decades.

And if y'all haven't yet already, do yourselves a favor and look up NASASpaceflight on YouTube, watch their most viewed videos, which should be some of the SpaceX tests. You'll come to understand why shit blowing up is normal and a good thing with SpaceX: because they prototype and develop iteratively and rapidly, intentionally testing to failure so they know exactly how far from failure their nominal conditions would be. If they did not do this, the platform would not be safe and they would be getting fucked by a camel wearing another camel's skin for kicks.

Then why arent we building Saturn Vs?

Their aim is to make a rocket of similar payload capability 100-150t, but with a per launch cost of about $100 million via reusability.

Elon Musk promises a lot of things, but doesn't have a good track record on delivering.

SLS has at least been around the moon. I agree that it's a step backwards, but Starship is two steps backwards. Just seems to be a knock-off of the Space Shuttle (which also proved to be a bad idea) that's being developed by just blowing shit up. I hope I'm wrong about Starship, it would be awesome it it worked. But it's the same goes fore the Space Shuttle too.

But more likely we will end the SLS program when it proves to be a never ending money sink, and with so much money put into development, we’ll end up with a per launch cost upwards of $5 billion.

SpaceX has already blown through $5 billion and hasn't launched anything yet. Well yeah I guess they got it into space briefly... spinning out of control until it burnt up. They haven't even gotten to the part of testing to make see if the heat tiles that we see peeling off the thing will make it go full Columbia on a regular basis. If it ever works it'll be a long time before that thing gets man rated.

Like I say, SLS sucks but it's has a successful launch and has gotten around the Moon. Actually successful not SpaceX "successful".

SpaceX is currently losing the "bad idea space race" to NASA. The only winners in the Space race will be the billionaires that'll make a lot of money from making giant rockets that go nowhere.