> Doesn't work? It seems to be working great for the industry leader.

What are you talking about? SpaceX's Falcon 9 is arguably the most reliable rocket ever made. They've launched hundreds of times in a row without failure.

If your point is that they're blowing up Starship prototypes, well... they're in the middle of a development program and they're not flying customer payloads.

They blow up a few of the early Falcons, and the explosions got a lot of news coverage.

Now they are launching an landing[1] safetly, but it's boring and the news show a cute puppy instead.

So for most people the rate of explosions vs launching is skewed.

[1] It's crazy that landing rockets is boring now.