Dude! Where's My Rocket?

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the things people say. Take SpaceX for example. They're a company founded/funded by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal. Their goal is to "reduce the cost and increase the reliability of access to space ultimately by a factor of ten". They launched a rocket the other day with an Air Force research academy satellite on it.

Shortly after launch, the rocket developed a fuel leak and blew up - oopsie. The glass half full side of me wants to say "well, if the rocket truly costs one thenth what current rockets cost, then they can do this up to eight more times before they are no longer the cheaper alternative (for argument's sake, let's pretend that the satellites that are blowing up along with the rockets cost nothing, ok?)."

But that's not me. I just want to make fun of them. And their glass isn't half full, it's blown to bits. After the failure, Mr. Musk was quoted as saying:

The good news is that all vehicle subsystems, including the main engine, thrust vector control, structures, avionics, software, guidance algorithm, etc. were picture perfect.

I'm sorry, I must have missed something. Picture perfect? Sounds like denial to me - I mean, charred remains of his rocket are bobbing ever so gently on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, but as far as he is concerned all vehicle subsystems were picture perfect? He knows the rocket is gone, right?

Or maybe this is his software background shining through - when software crashes, you can restart things and pick up where you left off (more or less anyway). I'm not so sure a quick reboot will recover from this though..