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The only thing that matters is that things do not blow up with humans onboard: SpaceX simply accepted blow-ups as part of development cost, made sure nobody was hurt when they happen, and ended up building a rocket to carry humans to ISS much faster than eg. Boeing who got a bigger grant and is still not trusted to do that and bring them back (having only launched once to ISS last year, and not bringing astronauts back). So both faster and cheaper, and with some spectacle included too (everybody likes fireworks, right?)
They also started at the same time, and Falcon is now considered old tech (because SpaceX has been blowing up their new tech in the meantime).
A fun fact about SpaceX:
Remember our esteemed national American hero, and spiritual father of SpaceX, Wernher von Braun.
Wernher wrote a book about Mars referring to "The Elon", an imaginary Mars governing body.
The father of Elon Musk claimed that Elon's name came from there.
Well at least, that's what he claims. Reality doesn't matter if you have billions and power. History can be rewritten.
Maybe parent feels like rocket science is a field that should have few launch failures?
I can't give you a quantitative answer since I'm usually focused on new research rather than what company/nation did said research... but their stuff does seem to blow up on the launchpad more often than NASA's :-)
Unless you count test artifacts, an actual catastrophic failure of a rocket on a launchpad (or even in flight) has been rare in the last 10 years.
Im getting the sense that you are here to defend Space X and Elon Musk on the battlefield of internet forums.
>Why post anything online?
Typically people post things on HN for different reasons than they do on reddit or bsky, but your post seems like a much better fit for reddit or bsky. These types of factually nonsensical ideological signaling posts are popular on those websites, but are generally considered to be in poor form on this website.
Oh you mean like the endless spam about how Macs are the best laptops and computers in the world, being able to run large models at dogshit low tok/sec for the price of twice what would it take to build an equivalent dual 3090 desktop that will be much faster?
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with calling out shit companies ran by shit people, that present a real danger to the world.
But you didn't call anybody out.
The modern zeitgeist of not liking someone in one area so now everything associated with them must be bad is insufferable.
I feel like thats due to the sheer number of launches, which turns out are mostly paid out of pocket, as Space X is hugely unprofitable.
Thats not to say its not a good design, the Falcon engine is actually well made because of the open cycle design which is MUCH simpler to control than the Raptor which is the equivalent of Twin Turbos + Nitrous on 2.0L 4 banger pushing 1000 hp.