NASA has blown up a lot of RS-25s over decades in testing to get to that point. And a couple of Shuttles. When half your components have decades of reliability

NASA has blown up a lot of RS-25s over decades in testing to get to that point. And a couple of Shuttles. When half your components have decades of reliability under their belt of course it’s easier to have a successful first launch. If your development methodology results in a product that is unsustainable to launch due to costs and scalability, that absolutely seems relevant to whether that methodology was successful.