SpaceX is staffed by some of the brightest aerospace engineers and scientists with decades of aerospace industry experience. Tom Mueller and Gwynne Shotwell had over 3 decades of experience between them in the aerospace industry before they joined SpaceX. To say they had not space or rocket experience is absurd.
Additionally SpaceX has received tremendous support from NASA both financially and technically. SpaceX has received close to half a billion dollars in "seed money" from NASA and has contracts for almost three billion dollars from them. NASA provides an extraordinary amount of technical oversight and guidance to SpaceX.
That's not to say SpaceX hasn't made significant advancements, Boeing has considerably more experience and received similar amounts of funding from NASA but has failed to achieve nearly what SpaceX has.
Sorry should have specific, otherwise I'll get downvoted into oblivion. In lack of experience, I meant supply chain / logistics, manufacturing, etc.
They had to spin up a factory from scratch with, as a company, having never done it before. Sure NASA had to do some of that, but they largely had much of these bits in place from past projects or could re-use contracts from existing manufacturers. A huge part of this is simply negotiating with other companies that supply parts.
Additionally, they did a lot of entirely new ways of doing things. As far as I'm aware, SpaceX's method of friction welding is one of the best in the industry. Additionally, they 3d print some of the parts for the engines, the main oxidizer valve is one of note. Pretty sure they were also one of the first to do this.
So in summary, even with veterans of the industry, they are doing things in a way never done before in history, so that doesn't negate the fact that it was revolutionary what they've managed to do.
SpaceX isn't mass producing rockets, it's low volume to the point that each rocket is almost a one off custom development. There's no robot factory churning out rockets.
This is also where Musk comes into play, he isn't the rocket scientist behind SpaceX, he's everything else. Musk keeps his companies fairly interconnected and manages to effectively share resources between them.
Sure SpaceX has a lot of innovative technology but then so did the Space Shuttle. It certainly wasn't cobbled together from off the shelf technology. Almost everything about it was new and innovative. Additionally SpaceX has the advantage of advanced technologies that weren't available when the shuttle was designed. Additive manufacturing is one you alluded to but also advanced computer modelling, advanced alloys, and all of the advanced sensor technologies that simply didn't exist for the shuttle. All of this allows for a level of rapid prototyping not possible in the 70s.
Yup, I've read Musk's biography. Very familiar with his unusual style. But they've achieved something a private company has never done before. They were the first non-nation state space company to launch a liquid based rocket to orbit.
I guess we should politely agree to disagree. They're amazing however you look at it and the rest is just splitting hairs.
Additionally SpaceX has received tremendous support from NASA both financially and technically. SpaceX has received close to half a billion dollars in "seed money" from NASA and has contracts for almost three billion dollars from them. NASA provides an extraordinary amount of technical oversight and guidance to SpaceX.
That's not to say SpaceX hasn't made significant advancements, Boeing has considerably more experience and received similar amounts of funding from NASA but has failed to achieve nearly what SpaceX has.