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Why has it taken so long to get people on-board the Dragon Crew Capsule? Isn't it mostly because of all the safety testing that has to be done? Didn't get the chance today to hear about Starship's safety mechanisms.

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NASA requirements + lack of full reusability. It's a lot easier to vet safety through large numbers of tests if you can launch much more often and at a much lower cost which is what they want from Starship.

Because one blew up.

I doubt it. Everyone knows that this shit is dangerous. It's not a question of if something bad will happen, it's a question of how often. There's some pretty gnarly diminishing returns on proofing these beasts, but SpaceX has a huge advantage over the boosters that NASA used- they're reusable so getting a few extra 9's of safety is not necessarily a waste.

Of course, the non-reusable boosters had an advantage too where they were only subjected to the insane stress of a launch once, but I'm guessing that's a smaller advantage than what I said above or else we wouldn't have modern airlines.

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