me_irl

No, SpaceX biggest success story is the Falcon9. The most flown launch system in history by a huge margin, most reliable launch system in history by a wide margin, and absurdly cheap thanks to the integrated supply chain and reusablitly, launches booked out years and years in advance.

And you're massively downplaying starlink. It's biggest use cases are things like ships and planes that cannot possibly use terrestrial broadband. Then even with rural users it's a game changer as ISP arent going to spend millions rolling out high speed connection to the middle of nowhere. It's just not economical for them.

Based on past NASA projects it would be so much more expensive for them to develop them themselves even without the inevitable constantly shifting budgets and mission requirements. You can blame that on whatever you want, but it's still the reality.