SpaceX's blow-it-up testing won't fly on starship

SpaceX's willingness to blow stuff up and learn from the failures has propelled it from a cash-strapped startup to one of the world's most valuable companies (and kick-started a commercial space revolution along the way).

The development of the Falcon 9 rocket was achieved over a relatively short period in space-industry time. That success was built on SpaceX's willingness to test, fail and repeat rapidly. The Falcon 1 rocket failed three times before reaching orbit on the fourth try in 2008 just before Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's money ran out. SpaceX blew up a couple of rockets on the way to Falcon 9 reaching orbit, while Musk helped popularize the phrase "rapid unscheduled disassembly."

This unique engineer-led culture is a reason that buy-side analysts have justified valuations for Musk's space venture that are, well, out of this world. SpaceX is adept at building complicated hardware and manufacturing almost all components in-house.