None of that was like what SpaceX is doing.

There were failures in the race and they were testing things, but failures weren't the expected outcomes and part of the planned development cycle. Like they still don't even know how to make a reusable heat shield which is fundamental to this working.

SpaceX has built a manufacturing line to churn these things out and is like we think this might work, let's try it in flight hardware. Oh okay that didnt work, let's try something else. Oh okay that did work now, but if we do this does it still work because if it does we can eek out 2% more performance. Oh shit now we have a brand new mark 2 engine. Does it sill work? Let's make it longer now with more fuel and new tanks!

Starships blowing up is part of how they are iterating. No one else has done it this way, or so publicly.

The government cant handle things like this because people like you look at it as a failure and shit gets shut down. If they IPO its also going to cause issues for the same reason.

Meanwhile SpaceX has designed, built, flew and landed two orbital boosters before anyone landed one. They fucking caught it in chopsticks.