[larkost]

I think he is probably right, if you think of Starship has a government-paid program to produce a moon lander. The Starship program has blown though the NASA money to produce the basic version (but not yet the additional money agreed for a more advanced design), but has yet to deliver on any of their contracted goals.

So by its own contract, it is just about to be over-budget, behind schedule, and thus a failed project. You can argue about the pandemic blowing their timing, but the fact remain.

But SpaceX is not treating the Starship as solely a moon landing project. They are using NASA's money presumably alongside other SpaceX and Starlink monies to produce a workhorse for a number of projects alongside the moon lander part. In the closer-term it will become the launch vehicle for Starlink (the next-gen of which is too big to be launched on other vehicles), and in the (very) long-term as a vehicle to Mars.

So SpaceX probably sees the Starship project as behind schedule (par for the course, both for space projects, and for Elon Musk), but not out-of-budget. Whether their customer, NASA, agrees with this outlook is something you would have to ask them.

So I think that the video's points are true, but lack some context.

[floating-io]

You're ignoring that this is a fixed-price contract. It will never be over-budget from NASA's perspective.

Also, for a project like HLS, you don't fail until you stop trying (or get someone killed, but SpaceX has been pretty good at not killing astronauts).