I love how whenever SpaceX fails to land a booster that I see headlines of "SpaceX blows up another rocket", even if it still delivered its payload to orbit.
I do wonder, however, where NASA would be if they would have continued with the DC-X prototype instead of abandoning it when it had a landing leg failure causing it to topple over in an early test.
It's because of Elon's hubris and the ways that hubris is baked into the entire institutional culture. I think far fewer people would delight in their failures if they showed an ounce of humility from any of their mistakes. Instead, they continue to make wild eyed proclamations and promises of impossible goals, but it's Elon so people continue to believe him for some reason.
