This is the 4th Starship that has imploded or exploded. They only lost 3 Falcon 1's before their first successful flight, and Elon has publicly stated that a 4th failure would have bankrupted the company.
Those three Falcon flights were attempts to reach orbit with rockets that weren't prototypes so the failures were more significant, and they probably blew up a bunch of Falcon prototypes behind closed doors prior to the launch attempts, but it's interesting how three failures on Falcon was a big deal but four failures on Starship isn't. SpaceX is certainly in a different and much less precarious position now than it was in 2006-2008.
They lost many more than 3 Falcon 1 tanks during development. They only lost 3 Falcon 1 launches to orbit. There have been 0 starship launches to orbit - they haven't even built a first stage prototype yet.
The difference between some test parts on a stick vs. a full rocket is so vast that I don't think you can make any coherent/interesting comparison of the numbers.
It's like comparing 4 millimeters to 3 inches. It doesn't matter at all that 4 > 3.
It's interesting that a company with a revenue stream can tolerate more failure of declared prototypes more than one without can tolerate operational (if early stage) deployments?
I mean yeah, it's a viable business now. In 2008 they had no successful launches, no revenue stream, and had almost exhausted their seed funds. That's pretty normal.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin got a billion dollars (together, so half a billion each) from the Air Force to develop Delta IV and Atlas V.
Then ULA got monopolist prices ($400 million for a Delta IV Heavy launch!) for years and a sweet billion dollars per year for maintaining the capability even if no launches happen that year.
Falcon 1 was developed using private money.
Falcon 9 and Dragon 1 were developed using 396 million of government money from NASA COTS program, and about a billion dollars of private money (for upgrades and reusability).
Falcon Heavy was developed using half a billion of private money.
That’s how it goes with building something properly large, isn’t it? The speed range on first gear is more narrow than second, and third, and so forth.
I’m just glad SpaceX has the cash flow and team to be able to pursue something as ambitious as BFR. Humans are going to need many thousands of rockets like that one if we are to survive.
> Humans are going to need many thousands of rockets like that one if we are to survive.
There is no chance in the next hundred years (I would bet more like 200-500) of a self-sufficient colony anywhere away from the earth. If humanity can't survive without rockets, it can't survive at all.
Not to mention that it is basically impossible to imagine that any technology that could allow a self-sufficient colony on another planet couldn't much more easily allow humans to live on earth after any catastrophe you could imagine short of cosmic ray events. It's much, much harder to live on Mars than on a post-apocalyptic earth, regardless of which apocalypse you care to choose (nuclear war, nuclear meltdowns in all nuclear power plants, catastrophic global warming, super volcanoes, meteor impact the size of the Cambrian event, you name it).
Sure, in the enormously long term there may be a need to leave the earth before the sun ages too much, or to try to have a chance against planetary collisions or gamma ray bursts.
Those three Falcon flights were attempts to reach orbit with rockets that weren't prototypes so the failures were more significant, and they probably blew up a bunch of Falcon prototypes behind closed doors prior to the launch attempts, but it's interesting how three failures on Falcon was a big deal but four failures on Starship isn't. SpaceX is certainly in a different and much less precarious position now than it was in 2006-2008.