Because people have failures and successes and when the successes are bigger than the failure we consider that a success
If I wanted to have a completely different conversation, unrelated to his reputation for making stuff up, with a fan about his creations I’d say something like “He created reusable rockets? Wow that Elon guy must have so many patents relating to aerospace and manufacturing” but that would be a totally different thread
People have goals they work towards...
Sometimes they have success/failure.
That's different from "making stuff up"