Absolutely--space is hard, and Starship is the most ambitious rocket ever, and SpaceX is, pretty obviously, the most talented and capable space company today (and maybe ever). I'm not arguing anything different.

I'm just saying that SpaceX themselves expected V2 to work better than it did. I don't think they would disagree that the first three launches of V2 were failures relative to their expectations.

But none of that contradicts your point that, even with failures, Starship is an engineering marvel. I do agree with you on that.