That's literally why SpaceX tests the way it does. Unexpected failures are this program's M.O... It's a test program and Starship, unlike Falcon, is not operational (let alone human rated). They can -and do- retrofit fixes to the new vehicles they already had at the time of an anomaly and are now capable of going SN to SN pretty fast (months).
An unexpected failure in a program like Vulcan or SLS would -maybe- derail it for years. I say maybe because Vulcan's upper stage's tank exploded during testing and it barely moved its schedule. SLS is a different beast, precisely because they simulate and ground-test every single little detail and possibility and building another SLS with fixes would probably be a multi-year project.
SpaceX is not cash constrained. Every offering they do is extremely limited in terms of who they let invest, yet is still always massively oversubscribed. They're spending multiple billions per year on both Starship and Starlink but haven't been tapping the capital markets -- IOW internal cash flow is also massive.
Elon would also undoubtedly pour his Tesla money into SpaceX to keep it afloat. He's a lot more passionate about SpaceX than Tesla. But it's a moot point because SpaceX has a massively profitable monopoly on efficient space launches and probably will for a very long time.
NASA's cash is nice to have. But it's not what's important to SpaceX at this point. Their estimated valuation is somewhere in the $200bn range. Their cash cow is Starlink (with 3 million subscribers and growing each month), the future profitability and competitivity of which is highly dependent on Starship being operational and fully reusable.
I know Elon says Multiplanetary this and Mars that but the real reason for the Starship push is Starlink. They need Starship to put bigger (V2s non-minis and V3s) and more satellites into the orbit if they want to get to that 35000 number this decade and not break the bank. They need to hurry before the likes of Amazon get their shit together and start building their own internet satellite constellations.
> I know Elon says Multiplanetary this and Mars that but the real reason for the Starship push is Starlink.
Elon Musk has been talking about Mars colonization since 2001, and first brought up the idea of a "Mars Colonial Transporter" mega-rocket in 2012. Starlink did not come along until 2016; that business was created to provide a profit-generating customer for Starship.
That's literally why SpaceX tests the way it does. Unexpected failures are this program's M.O... It's a test program and Starship, unlike Falcon, is not operational (let alone human rated). They can -and do- retrofit fixes to the new vehicles they already had at the time of an anomaly and are now capable of going SN to SN pretty fast (months).
An unexpected failure in a program like Vulcan or SLS would -maybe- derail it for years. I say maybe because Vulcan's upper stage's tank exploded during testing and it barely moved its schedule. SLS is a different beast, precisely because they simulate and ground-test every single little detail and possibility and building another SLS with fixes would probably be a multi-year project.