I don’t really understand this comment. I don’t think I’ve even read a press release from SpaceX, most of my exposure to the Starship program has been to videos of Starships flying (and often exploding)… and then another one flies soon after.
So I’m not sure how we can call the Starship program vaporware? There are stainless steel towers flying in Texas - the only vapor is their exhaust.
The most commonly referenced SpaceX "vaporware" I've seen is the late 2018 crewed Falcon Heavy moon fly-by[0] that was announced in early 2017 that never came to pass, but that pretty clearly was what became Yusaku Maezawa's dearMoon Project[1] that's now planned to fly on Starship.
As for why that happened, I think it's pretty obvious.
1. Crew-rating a rocket is no small feat, and with Falcon 9 already crew rated and Starship advancing quickly Falcon Heavy was never going to get enough crewed missions to justify the cost.
2. If you were picking which tin can to hurdle through space for a week with a few others in, would it be the one with the internal pressurized volume of a minivan (Crew Dragon) or the one with the internal pressurized volume greater than that of an Airbus A380 (Starship)?
So I’m not sure how we can call the Starship program vaporware? There are stainless steel towers flying in Texas - the only vapor is their exhaust.