Ironically, every single launch of Elon's Folly has been very successful in demonstrating the intellectual and cultural deficiencies that hobble the U.S. technology industry. From the beginning of the ridiculous strategy of welding together something vaguely rocket-like in a tent, every serious aerospace engineer (REAL, LICENSED engineers, not hobbyists, amateurs, or the uneducated with YouTube as a soapbox) knew it was utterly ridiculous and would never work. Other serious launch vehicles (including Falcon) are manufactured in clean, climate-controlled settings with precise methodologies arising from a combination of expert engineering talent and a legacy stretching back to the very origins of rocketry. With the "Starship", musk decided to sidestep this and reinvent the wheel in a tent (After all, isn't he smarter than everybody else? He certainly believes so.) It was essentially a glorified hobbyist project no different in character than other inane diversions that billionaires quench their boredom with. Raptor, arguably the only successful component, dates from an aforegoing R&D effort funded by the USAF for a high-energy upper stage, so its development followed rigorous practices and produced a functional result. (unlike "starship," which has failed in some way on each flight.)
This sort of surreal incompetence is emblematic of the present technology and engineering sectors. I would intuitively imagine that its causes are multivariate, but almost certainly one among these is the inability of people today to think critically. The attrition of intelligence itself truly began in the 1990s, when we began offloading cognitive tasks to computers and mass networking inflated the value of communication. Why think critically about writing a letter when you can send an instant email instead? Over time, these abuses of technology proliferated into just "tech", which we might use to denote all the contraptions to offload mental effort and discourage/ divert from serious intellectual inquiry. It became even worse with smartphones inescapably short-circuiting the hedonic structures supporting cognition, apocalyptic with "TikTok", and the advent of AI has enabled us to avoid thinking even for trivial tasks. Why learn mental math when you have a calculator? Why practice your writing if a spell checker, "Grammarly" or "ChatGPT" can write for you?
Education is also among the preeminently culpable structures for the erosion of intellect. Present-day mass education is more about establishing fixed patterns of reaction to authority. (Gatto, 2003) It is more rewarded to mindlessly memorize the narrow use-cases of some relation than to cultivate the deep understanding that gives rise to engineering insight. I teach an SI class, and the practice of such in no way involved arming students with analytical tools and turning them free to engage on the delightful (and truly rewarding) task of insight. Such inference, planning, or even desire is alien to them. They want to go back home and play computer games, or stare at their phone, which reduces teaching to "This is the law in question. Here are the types of problems that will be on the test. Here is the equation to be used for each type of problem," followed by rote reinforcement.
Another obstacle is cultural. Back in the 1950s when the U.S. aerospace industry was strongly expanding, almost all the engineering staff had some form of military experience, which taught them not to work as self-absorbed hooligans but as a team. People today, especially young people, are self-centered and have no idea how to put aside such a view of the world. The military VERY quickly extirpates that from people, and it stays with you for the rest of your life.
Corporate culture is another problem entirely, but it compounds on the prior shortcomings. Most of those in executive positions are beset and blinded with a sense of personal superiority that they become detached from reality. This may only evoke inefficiency in other areas, but in engineering, it's fatal. Musk illustrates this excellently: the strategy of welding together 304 stainless rings to make a pressure vessel was obviously some drug-induced flight of fancy (Musk has admitted to being a drug user, smoking cannabis on a recording). Musk was so confident in his personal ability to solve problems that evidence indicating the insufficiency of such a method was ignored. For certainty's sake, BUILDING LAUNCH VEHICLES IN A TENT IS NOT A VIABLE MANUFACTURING METHOD. Intuitively, we could very reasonably expect the same mismanagement pattern to be present in a preponderant share of other companies.
The spectacular engineering failures by groups like SpaceX and Boeing seem to indicate that technology is regressing into a form of mysticism, where even its practitioners hold a limited understanding of their trade. Innovation and technological development require a commitment to scientific truth that present educational, social, and technological factors all militate against. (Actual science, as in the rich empirical tradition that grew out of the Enlightenment instead of the statistical cargo cult McScience that frequently replaces it today.) Without dramatic social changes to support engineering, we face an ominous risk of being stuck on earth forever.