this might be 20th-century thinking. if you can build enough copies of a rocket cheap enough, maybe disintegrating a bunch of them isn't a showstopper
The problem with that idea is that you won't be legally allowed to launch again until you root cause and fix the failure, which can take months (or years if you're Blue Origin). Also, your insurance rates tend to go up a lot when your rockets blow up regularly, which tends to push customers away.
In practice it doesn't work.
Notes: Astra said they were going to pursue this strategy. It was not well received by potential customers and they basically had to walk it back.
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.
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.
Only if you want to launch from US. I guess with a 160 countries there will some with the right area for a launch pad with way laxer requirements.
Good luck with that.
Exploding rockets are a very serious public safety risk since they're >90% propellant. Even Russia grounded Soyuz until they root caused its launch failure. From what I can gather China has the same policy, although they're very quiet about any launch failures that happen, so it harder to tell.
The rocket itself is purely a delivery system for a payload after all.
In many cases the cargo is more precious than the rocket so you need reliable rockets.
But it isn't about destroying a bunch of them. Cut corners on checks and you very quickly blow up all of them. Any slight increase in the failure rate of individual parts, saving a few pennies, multiplies exponentially across the entire rocket into total system failure. So the money-saving approach is actually to test test and retest, to cram down the failure rates so low that the cumulative rate become acceptable (about 1%).
ready to build many Webb telescopes?
Day 1 patches for space travel?
Thanks, I hate it.
Unless this was something like a cruise missile dropped at altitude where a failure isn't a big deal.
Also, failures might reduce the accuracy of the missile, leading to potential civilian causalities.
If failure isn't a big deal, then the weapon should no have been used. An ALCM costs millions. The destruction it causes is part of a larger battle plan. Should it not work properly then friendly forces may die. Should it work properly then enemy forces may die. The effectiveness of such a weapon is never not a big deal.
If system A costs 1k quid but only works 50% of the time, while system B works 99% of the time but costs 10k quid, system A actually makes a lot more sense. On average you are going to spend a lot less money for the same outcome.