SpaceX nearly went bankrupt after three Falcon 1 failures and succeeded on the fourth through iterative engineering, not luck. NASA became a major customer after SpaceX had already reached orbit privately, and the partnership has been mutually beneficial: NASA got cheaper, reliable US launch capability, and SpaceX got anchor contracts. Today SpaceX earns enormous revenue independent of NASA — from commercial launches and Starlink — and in 2025 launched 165 times, lifting over 80% of the world's payload mass to orbit. Luck does not repeat 600+ times. The company's dominance is the product of a reusability strategy executed relentlessly over two decades. The clearest tell is the competition: every major spacefaring nation and a wave of well-funded startups have spent years trying to copy reusable boosters, and none has matched SpaceX's cadence or cost. Repeatable, improving results that rivals cannot replicate are the definition of skill, not chance.