SpaceX had to blow up plenty to get to where they are.

Yeah, but the vast majority of those were planned, and at least most exceeded expectations.

Was this an expected outcome? It doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve not really investigated it deeply.

Only their most recent explosions have been planned. Anyone who followed early Starship, and even before then, remembers how much unexpected exploding, bursting and burning it, and previous SpaceX projects, have done to get to their current level of reliability.

SpaceX has had several unplanned explosions on the launchpad.

What are you talking about exceeded expectations? Starship is very far behind schedule.

It looks like SpaceX blew up ~20 times while Blue Origin has blown up ~4

blowing up on the pad is a whole different level of disaster (which yeah spacex has done a couple times)