That's also why research, prototyping and product development should often be done in ways where failure is a lot cheaper and your optimum failure rate can be much higher, accelerating progress hugely.
For example at a smaller pilot scale or in test benches.
Yet, if your test bench is very complicated, slow, costly and introduces errors of its own, it might not be wise. Also some "flying" test configurations can be a dead end.
So in the big "Battlestar galactica" NASA missions with lots of new technology, the cost of failure is very high. That's why they analyze a lot and test stuff in test benches. But those can be dead ends. It makes everything even more costly, making failure even more expensive, requiring more tests. Schedules slip while you have zero science return to show... It's a vicious circle.
It might make more sense to just for example launch many smaller probes, each one somewhat better than the previous one in some degrees. Some might crash, but if your audience understands that, it's not a political disaster. You're going to fly the next one again in two years. This way you also don't have to wait 20 years for your technology development to pay off.
So SpaceX launched Falcon 1 quite many times, and learned a lot about technology as well as matured as an organization. They crashed quite many times as well. But those were not nearly as expensive as Falcon 9 crashes were at this point.
That's also why they were flying different versions of Grasshopper and now Falcon 9 R. Retire risk. Allow crashes - when you can afford them. This will reduce crashes later when you can not allow them.
So it is a slightly complex issue but nothing very out of the ordinary. Usually in the real world things settle into a good compromise between conflicting goals.
Actually, SpaceX only launched two successful F1s, flights 4 and 5, before moving on the the development of the F9. And there was only one demonstration flight of F9 before it flew with the first Dragon. So it's not exactly like the test flights have been that many.
For example at a smaller pilot scale or in test benches.
Yet, if your test bench is very complicated, slow, costly and introduces errors of its own, it might not be wise. Also some "flying" test configurations can be a dead end.
So in the big "Battlestar galactica" NASA missions with lots of new technology, the cost of failure is very high. That's why they analyze a lot and test stuff in test benches. But those can be dead ends. It makes everything even more costly, making failure even more expensive, requiring more tests. Schedules slip while you have zero science return to show... It's a vicious circle.
It might make more sense to just for example launch many smaller probes, each one somewhat better than the previous one in some degrees. Some might crash, but if your audience understands that, it's not a political disaster. You're going to fly the next one again in two years. This way you also don't have to wait 20 years for your technology development to pay off.
So SpaceX launched Falcon 1 quite many times, and learned a lot about technology as well as matured as an organization. They crashed quite many times as well. But those were not nearly as expensive as Falcon 9 crashes were at this point.
That's also why they were flying different versions of Grasshopper and now Falcon 9 R. Retire risk. Allow crashes - when you can afford them. This will reduce crashes later when you can not allow them.
So it is a slightly complex issue but nothing very out of the ordinary. Usually in the real world things settle into a good compromise between conflicting goals.