This is simply inaccurate. You can spend months and hundreds of millions of dollars running scanning electron microscopes over all of your parts - no one does this, because it's not "worth the squeeze". The question is where to draw the line, and I have no idea what your opinion is there.
To make matters worse the failure modes don't only affect the launch vehicle itself. A failure of a rocket likely means a total loss of the payload. It also runs the risk of damage/loss of the launch pad, support structures, and hapless down range victims.
Rockets contain a significant amount of stored chemical energy, enough to get the payload mass into a stable orbit of the Earth. If you release all of that energy at once as an explosion it will cause a significant amount of damage. Rockets aren't something to goof around with and make assumptions about safety.
The problem with that idea is that you won't be legally allowed to launch again until you root cause and fix the failure, which can take months (or years if you're Blue Origin). Also, your insurance rates tend to go up a lot when your rockets blow up regularly, which tends to push customers away.
In practice it doesn't work.
Notes: Astra said they were going to pursue this strategy. It was not well received by potential customers and they basically had to walk it back.
What are you talking about? SpaceX's Falcon 9 is arguably the most reliable rocket ever made. They've launched hundreds of times in a row without failure.
If your point is that they're blowing up Starship prototypes, well... they're in the middle of a development program and they're not flying customer payloads.
Now they are launching an landing[1] safetly, but it's boring and the news show a cute puppy instead.
So for most people the rate of explosions vs launching is skewed.
[1] It's crazy that landing rockets is boring now.
Only if you want to launch from US. I guess with a 160 countries there will some with the right area for a launch pad with way laxer requirements.
Good luck with that.
Exploding rockets are a very serious public safety risk since they're >90% propellant. Even Russia grounded Soyuz until they root caused its launch failure. From what I can gather China has the same policy, although they're very quiet about any launch failures that happen, so it harder to tell.
The rocket itself is purely a delivery system for a payload after all.
In many cases the cargo is more precious than the rocket so you need reliable rockets.
But it isn't about destroying a bunch of them. Cut corners on checks and you very quickly blow up all of them. Any slight increase in the failure rate of individual parts, saving a few pennies, multiplies exponentially across the entire rocket into total system failure. So the money-saving approach is actually to test test and retest, to cram down the failure rates so low that the cumulative rate become acceptable (about 1%).
Unless this was something like a cruise missile dropped at altitude where a failure isn't a big deal.
Also, failures might reduce the accuracy of the missile, leading to potential civilian causalities.
If failure isn't a big deal, then the weapon should no have been used. An ALCM costs millions. The destruction it causes is part of a larger battle plan. Should it not work properly then friendly forces may die. Should it work properly then enemy forces may die. The effectiveness of such a weapon is never not a big deal.
If system A costs 1k quid but only works 50% of the time, while system B works 99% of the time but costs 10k quid, system A actually makes a lot more sense. On average you are going to spend a lot less money for the same outcome.
ready to build many Webb telescopes?
Day 1 patches for space travel?
Thanks, I hate it.
You create a process, you test that process so that you understand its limits, and then you make sure to follow that process.
Now I don't know if 3D printing rocket parts actually works and I have my doubts but this startup is currently testing the process and they will figure out its limits. That's the whole point of R&D.
In rockets/aerospace, where the failure of any one of a thousand different parts means instant disintegration, checks are always worth the squeeze. Everyone talks about building rockets on the cheap and accepting a slightly-higher failure rate, but in reality that doesn't work. Even a tiny increase in component fault rates translates to total mission failure once multiplied across thousands of vital parts. The answer isn't to not check but to find ways to more efficiently and more thoroughly check each part. This is only more true if one considers reusable rockets where components will be expected to participate in multiple launches.