"Even if it never reaches orbit reliably"

How is that a greater achievement than Falcon 9 and reusable boosters, especially Falcon Heavy? Like sure if Starship lives up to its goals it will be a greater achievement. But how would an ambitious project that fails its most fundamental task (reaching orbit reliably) be a greater achievement than one that actually does meet its goals and was (and is) still incredibly revoluationary?

Because the engineering involved in what has already been achieved with the whole Starship program (the stage0/OLM quick disconnect/chopsticks, as well as the full flow staged combustion Raptor: v1, and v2, and especially v3) is a far greater technological achievement than any part of the F9/FH stack.

Starship is a HARD project, and even the components that they have completed are insane levels of engineering, far beyond even the whole F9 program.

It’s not just a “does the rocket work” thing. Every working part of Starship so far has been a monumental breakthrough of unprecedented scale. The fact that they built the largest ever orbital launch system (it’s currently not yet reusable but it can indeed put a ~hundred tons into orbit in a single 15 minutes) is enough to classify it as an unqualified success. Their stated goal just happens to be significantly greater than even that.

It has already surpassed the (non-reusable) Saturn V in price/perf as well as payload capacity (and development program total cost).