SpaceX should have been a failure.

• The US lost its primary source of engines and one of its main launch providers
• the US was between rockets
• Obama space advisors groked that the more people involved with space the higher the chance programs don't get cut. Hence private launch contracts.
• every other country that can do something in space lost interest for decades but still had needs.
• Wall Street scumbags took over Boeing.
• they hired obsessed talent in the beginning.

Any of those things hadn't happened when they did and it would have been failure. Only one of them is because of something they did.