I know these kinds of explosions aren't disasters per se, but at what point in development do these kind of destructive results become very unwanted? Or was that classic Calvin and Hobbes comic about bridge testing less of a joke than I had though?
Also, there are only an estimated 300 employees building Starships (although there are probably more working on engineering), so on-site labor costs are probably about a million a week. Since they can pop out a new iteration every few weeks they cost is probably only about a few million per ship. That's a lot of money in some industries, but it's a rounding error in rocketry. They could build dozens or even hundreds of prototypes for less than the cost of a conventional disposable rocket, like SLS.
The idea that the cheapest way to build a rocket is to blow up dozens of prototypes is a bit counterintuitive, but I believe it's the future. Organizations that move more slowly to avoid failures will fall further and further behind, since the tortoise only wins if the hare falls asleep, which SpaceX shows no signs of doing.
Civil engineers are able to use mathematical models to develop bridges because we've been building bridges for thousands of years, and they can build in huge safety factors. Fully reusable rockets have never been built before and can't afford the luxury of large safety factors due to the Rocket Equation, so testing to failure is the fastest way to learn, and when almost all of the cost is labor, fastest = cheapest.
Yeah, they expanded fast at Boca. Gwynne Shotwell doesn't get the attention she deserves unless you're in the know, but she really is a total badass COO. I really wanted to see her at the Cape for this momentous occasion but things are Hawthorne are he priority.
I still remember that shot from her and the Team at HQ going crazy after the first stage recovery, I threw my hands in the air like that watching the Live stream for ORBCOMM 2 and just kept yelling 'they did it!'