Let's hope they continue making progress. Expected failures are fine. Unexpected failures have the potential to derail such a program for years.
That's literally why SpaceX tests the way it does. Unexpected failures are this program's M.O... It's a test program and Starship, unlike Falcon, is not operational (let alone human rated). They can -and do- retrofit fixes to the new vehicles they already had at the time of an anomaly and are now capable of going SN to SN pretty fast (months).
An unexpected failure in a program like Vulcan or SLS would -maybe- derail it for years. I say maybe because Vulcan's upper stage's tank exploded during testing and it barely moved its schedule. SLS is a different beast, precisely because they simulate and ground-test every single little detail and possibility and building another SLS with fixes would probably be a multi-year project.
I know Elon says Multiplanetary this and Mars that but the real reason for the Starship push is Starlink. They need Starship to put bigger (V2s non-minis and V3s) and more satellites into the orbit if they want to get to that 35000 number this decade and not break the bank. They need to hurry before the likes of Amazon get their shit together and start building their own internet satellite constellations.
Elon Musk has been talking about Mars colonization since 2001, and first brought up the idea of a "Mars Colonial Transporter" mega-rocket in 2012. Starlink did not come along until 2016; that business was created to provide a profit-generating customer for Starship.
Catastrophic ones, sure. But not just the unexpected. If you aren’t unexpectedly failing in such an endeavour, you’re not pushing hard enough.