Elon Musk

[AFTT47]

The difference is that the testing is usually done on hardware in a much more mature state. How many other aerospace companies do you see launch rockets with an estimated success rate of just 50%? Where they're happy if the thing just makes it off the pad before it explodes?

Other companies spend a lot more time trying to perfect the design before they launch a test because of bad optics. When things crash and burn, investors get nervous. In the case of publicly funded projects, politicians get nervous because they wonder what the voters are thinking when they see things go boom. SpaceX is mostly privately funded. They aren't beholden to anyone so they don't worry about blowing things up. It tends to move development along faster. When you operate that way, you're going to experience a lot of very visible failures along the way. For this reason, I think criticism of Starship is silly based on failures in test flights. Instead, look at the progress made from one flight to the next.

As to assumption of success, yes I am an optimist here. Musk's track record with SpaceX is very good. Only his time estimates have been off. He and his engineers have been successful with everything they have attempted thus far so I have a good feeling about Starship.