SpaceX accomplishes so many miracles on the regular that people never even hear about. None of it was inevitable. Musk's haters saying "his engineers did it" like the space agencies he's blown out of the water don't have engineers.
Back when SpaceX was first starting out with Falcon and Dragon, ULA (Lockheed and Boeing) was using engines from Russia. SpaceX is all American made. They make their own engines and other elements in-house. ULA got more money and never achieved a reusable rocket. They didn't even try. They only want to "keep the upper stage" and call that reusable.
Or take Bechtel, another big defense contractor. NASA awarded them a $388m contract to build a mobile launch tower for SLS rockets- NASA's heavy payload that is supposed to compete with Starship. Starship just landed perfectly on a dime and its tower caught it. Bechtel... their project is up to 2.7 billion dollars and climbing, and they're nowhere near done. NASA wanted it done in 2026. They moved the finish date out to 2027 and then 2029.