NASA's very early launches were hardly more reliable. But there was always an overlap with ICBM development and national defence. So reliability improved quickly, and one of the goals of the space program was to showcase that reliability.
Once Apollo was running the success rate was 100%, with no boosters lost - an incredible achievement, not just of tech but of project management.
NASA of the day didn't need shielding, because it was already doing the job with no excuses.
At that time they didn't have TV news channels that can repeat the explosion 24 hour a day. Also the space race and cold war was a good shield, if someone complain s/he was accused of being an evil communist spy trying to destroy America.
I think in he previos programs they had unmanned missions, but once they reached Apollo they (always?) have to use manned missions because docking was not automated. Once you have persons inside the rockets they should not explode, so you must be extra careful with the design.
> because it was already doing the job with no excuses.
We will have to wait until someone makes another cheap reusable rocket to know how hard it is to design them without exploding a few of them. The move fast and break think applied to rocket science may be a brilliant strategy or a stupid excuse, but we will not know until someone else try. (I'm not counting the Space Shuttle. It was not reusable, it was expansively refurnishable after month of work.)
You know, on second thought: I don't recall Elon attracting all that much negativity before his recent escapades. Robert Downey Jr famously played Elon in Iron Man, and the audiences cheered. I think this is a case of "we were always at war with Eastasia".
Thanks - usually I understand what my downvotes are for, and stand by them. This instance would have left me puzzled without this explanation.
I would have thought that a leader is judged by their results, and regardless of personal feelings for Elon - one can't argue that he managed to build SpaceX where many others would have failed. Could NASA have built something just as good? Possibly, but history doesn't do hypotheticals.
The first few launches were very difficult. A NASA project with 10 crashes would have been destroyed by the press and congress.
The superpower of Elon is to shield the technical team from the negativity, pipe it to null and post "close but no ciggar".