"Explode until you figure it out" served Falcon 9 well.

I'm inclined to see Constellation/SLS/Orion/etc. as at least as wasteful as the explosions, at least so far. Which one wins out will depend on the end results.

I'd also note Apollo 13 was definitely a failure.

While "explode until you figure it out" worked well on the Falcon 9, it was a lot of taxpayer money to develop a rocket system primarily used to launch their own product at this point - not delivering on price-points they claimed

I might be a little bitter that NASA doesn't get that money instead.

NASA paid to get cargo and people up. Every other provider discarded the first stage.

NASA also got much cheaper launches out of it. They’re just fine.

This is the kind of logic that led the HE to outsource its manufacturing base to China because “Americans got cheaper shit”.

It’s a very reasonable argument for little tchotchkes you sell to tourists but much less so when talking about critical technologies.