When LandSpace's Zhuque-3 rocket exploded mid-flight, the headlines screamed disaster—even though the expendable upper stage technically made it to orbit. Here's the thing: if this exact scenario happened at SpaceX, Elon would've been tweeting about "rapid unscheduled disassembly" as a learning milestone. Same outcome, completely different spin. The gap isn't just technological—it's about how we frame iteration versus perfection. One company celebrates controlled chaos as progress; the other gets buried under "failure" narratives for achieving partial mission success. Makes you wonder how much innovation gets killed by optics alone.