It's not failing. I know that's a trope (1000 filaments that don't work)...but it really is the difference in you and them. Their mindset is not that they have failed, at any point. They are poking and probing and analyzing and incrementally finding things out. At no point were they failing. They probably didn't consider that they could fail.
This kind of constant striving and failing until finally succeeding would be such an incredibly frustrating experience for me.
Kudos to them though, it's serious perseverance.