&gt; why is SpaceX so much better at rocketry than everyone else?<p>Because Spacex doesn&#x27;t have to deal with these things. In fact they benefit from the Nasa funding right now as a major source of revenue. They wouldn&#x27;t have survived if they were just self-funded. Also they can get talent from NASA and other organizations that have already done a lot of groundbreaking work with pioneers in the field.<p>Just to be clear, Spacex has focused on reducing the launch costs but they haven&#x27;t yet and they still have a long way to go to actually delivering people and heavier loads in a repeatable process. They&#x27;ve also taken about 15 years to get to the last launch so none of this was quick.