Considering the whole content of the article I'm sure this is exactly what they also tried to mean. Also, "once starship prototypes are done exploding" means a

Considering the whole content of the article I'm sure this is exactly what they also tried to mean. Also, "once starship prototypes are done exploding" means a huge step because they can then focus totally on making things to scale and even higher/better/faster, it sounds like a great safety and engineering milestone and I didn't read it as a derogatory thing at all, it's just how rockets are... full of explosive fuel.