To me it's an incredible achievement. Raptor engine development started in 2012. Starship's development started around the same time. They now achieved max Q a

To me it's an incredible achievement. Raptor engine development started in 2012. Starship's development started around the same time. They now achieved max Q and got flight data all the way to booster separation. On real, flight ready hardware. By an all-American team started right here in California using private funding from an already profitable all-American privately developed launch platform (the Falcon 9). This is in contrast to the SLS and it's predecessor the Constellation program (the SLS really being an evolution of the Ares I and V) that started in 2005 and, so far yielded a single successful test flight. Almost 30 billions sunk in "research and development" (for Shuttle derived hardware?). Excluding launch costs. Or even really the crown jewel of the European Union, Ariane 6, a technological dead-end delayed once again and already 15 years behind the Falcon 9.