SpaceX has the benefit of the Commercial Resupply contract and other launches as a revenue stream to support R&D where Virgin Galactic only ever had the suborbi

SpaceX has the benefit of the Commercial Resupply contract and other launches as a revenue stream to support R&D where Virgin Galactic only ever had the suborbital hop which didn’t really have any government grants or bids to fund it. SpaceX’s overall design is also very traditional so to just get launches going there were a lot less completely novel problems to solve where Space Ship One is a pretty complex design.