SpaceX built rocket boosters that fly back and land themselves. The first years of attempts failed. In 2017 the company collected the crashes into a video.
The video’s captions read like punchlines. One booster is shown landing in flames. “Well, technically it did land,” the caption says. “Just not in one piece.” Another flight ends in what the company calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The jokes were earned. The first landings succeeded in December 2015 and April 2016. Reused boosters now land routinely.