What you count as success depends on what your goal is. It's entirely possibly SpaceX could have thrown extra billions at it and had a higher chance of successful orbit, but that doesn't mean they deemed that the most efficient use of time and money to advance the project. Sometimes it's far less costly in time and effort to start it up and see where it fails rather than look it over another 20 times and wrack your brain for anything you've missed before.
When I think I've gotten pretty far in a program I'm writing and there's even a small chance of it partially functioning, I'll often fire it up to get feedback on the errors I wasn't aware of as early as possible. Some of those may indicate larger structural changes that are required in the worst case, and the earlier I can learn about those the better.
When I think I've gotten pretty far in a program I'm writing and there's even a small chance of it partially functioning, I'll often fire it up to get feedback on the errors I wasn't aware of as early as possible. Some of those may indicate larger structural changes that are required in the worst case, and the earlier I can learn about those the better.