Social Media Doesn't Have High Hopes For First Human Trials Of Elon Musk's Experimental 'Brain Chip' Technology Neuralink - Comment #5,917,369

I mean I was going to be that nerd when I saw that caption, but I might as well write it out.

The last few rockets to explode at SpaceX were the Starship landing tests, where exploding was kind of expected. It is an in development vehicle, and the stuff that blew up was considered prototypes. There have been some Falcon 9 landing losses, but landing is still considered a secondary objective for the F9, and a successful mission can still occur safely even if an F9 blows up at landing… as long as it doesn't blow up during or before launch its a success.

So the last regular non-prototype in service SpaceX rocket to blow up during launch was a Falcon 9 in 2020… but THAT was also planned since it was the Crew Dragon abort demo and the rocket blowing up due to pressure load was expected.

So the last Falcon 9 to blow up failing its mission completely was… AMOS-6 during a static fire in 2016. So its been six years since any launch/pre-launch Falcon 9 explosions, two years since a planned Falcon 9 explosion, and the rest of the explosions have either been during landing attempts on the F9 (which is not a mission critical phase and still has a 90% success rate) and on the Starship tests which is still considered a prototype vehicle.