Perhaps.
But it bears honorable mention that the Saturn V - to which they were both comparing and gaslighting supremacy - had a perfect launch record.
I’ve never seen anything like that display. It was rather insulting.
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Apollo 1 wasn’t even supposed to launch, and still managed to kill the crew. The Apollo safety record is not as good as you imply. We learned a lot from that disaster, too. but it was much more costly data. This one is just lost hardware and money.
Saturn V had a launch failure...NEVER.
I equate the “Winston Smith” panel’s efforts to spin the launch to NASA claiming,
“Columbia flew a successful mission until reentry”
The Winston Smith panel literally said of the test’s terminus,
“Starship just experienced what we call a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” during ascent” as the other 2 Winstons giddily laughed & sported fake smiles.
Yes, rocket flight is fraught with risks, but we are exponentially more advanced than the slide-rule engineers of 1967. I don’t care that Musk started the gaslighting weeks ago by setting odds of even a successful clearing of the launch tower at 50/50. ‘Data’ doesn’t remedy the disconnect between engineering & flight in this event. I am not impressed neither at their engineering nor professionalism regarding a rocket intended to ferry astronauts in complement to Artemis to the Moon.
It was a pathetic display for a photo op; they handled the vehicle’s performance failure miserably.