“SpaceX's Texas Rocket Caused a Big Mess – What's Next?”

The cleansheet new rocket engine design took off in 33x quantity from the production line and reached supersonic speed. That is SUCCESS the competing new rocket engine manufacturers haven't achieved, yet. Maybe they'll do one or two but not 33x. The highly expensive to ride SLS museum piece doesn't even register on this new SUCCESS scale.

That it flew for 4 minutes before blowing up is pretty impressive for the first flight of something this massively complicated. No one has really tried anything comparable since the 60s (U.S. Saturn project and Soviet N-1 project (all 4 flights of which were failures)). So...yeah, IMO they can claim a success without too much handwaving.

Now, the fact they didn't understand it was going to destroy the pad taking off and the debris field was nothing like what they predicted is pretty troubling. That speaks to cutting corners and taking risks they shouldn't be allowed to take.