> failed to achieve its aim with Falcon?

Yes, actually. But we aren't resting on our (very profitable) laurels. Development of Falcon slowed so attention could pivot to the new generation of even more reusable vehicles. Development on Merlin started around 2005, the first F9 was built in 2010, and first landing was in 2015. Raptor engine testing began around that time, and starship hopped in 2020. These things take time, but in truth we're right on schedule.

> they fail like this

It's the equivalent of a taxiing accident at an airport while going to a maintenance hanger. Not really the failure mode most care about, especially not for a retired vehicle.

During WW2, the aircraft engine makers needed to make the engines more reliable. They'd put them on a test stand, and run them at full power until they broke. They'd investigate what broke, improve it, and run the engine until the next thing broke. Etc.

That's how to make things reliable.

19 cycles isn't a lot for reliability testing. I'm not a test engineer, but it'll likely take hundreds of launches to get them really solid.

Do you think you could work out all the kinks faster?

They've single-handedly changed how rocketry works. They're the only ones doing anything about this. Give them some time, for goodness sake! I think they've more than demonstrated their capability.

They're getting 18 launches out of these things. The previous record was 0 - 1 launches. It's an astonishing improvement, and they're getting better and better.

Do you know how many launches they have annually? Compare that with nasa/esa/kosmos 10 years ago. Cost per kg. Aware of that?

> Judging them against the competition seems fair but that's not the goal post they set for themselves.

Honest question, why does it seem fair to judge them against the goal they set for themselves rather than what they've achieved? To take the reverse example it means you should judge people really highly when they set really simple goals and then exceed the very simple goal. That doesn't seem very reasonable.

And to be clear, that goal you're talking about is the goal of SpaceX overall, not Falcon 9 specifically. The goal for Falcon 9 this year was 100 launches. They're on track to reach 96 or 97 this year, they're at 94 so far. I don't remember any plans to give Falcon 9 airline operations, unless you go back really far (around a decade ago) when there was still plans for Falcon 9 upper stage reusability.

Making rockets as reusable as airplanes necessitates many millions of flights per year, not a few hundreds. It will take a lot of time to build up enough demand. There has to be some pipeline of production which to be economical, needs to be constantly loaded, so at least a few dozen new rockets per year (airplane producers who build that little are normally balancing on the brink, it takes hundreds per year for true economy of scale). And then they need to fly thousands or at least many hundreds of times per year, each, over decades, so at least 10K times each, typically 30K or sometimes even 50K times. No less than a million total sorties per year PER PRODUCER, because an industry with just one supplier is never going to be efficient. So several million flights and maybe 50-100M tons delivered to LEO, per year, total.

It's hard to see what does the humankind may need to put into orbit in quantities like that. Just for comparison, this is about as much as air cargo volumes delivered in the world.

Why does this username appear green on my screen?