> get the feeling investors are going to watch Starship explode and explode while it's being developed without understanding the trial/error, hardware rich, approach SpaceX takes
Investors have been doing this since SpaceX first raised outside funding. American capital markets are not that risk averse.
tbf those investments weren't traded on a liquid market, and I suspect Founders Fund are less worried about short term setbacks than your average mutual fund or mug punter.
But of course we also know that Musk-run public companies are immune to normal dynamics of worrying about next quarter's returns (or even worrying about the CEO publicly torching his brand equity) so the very last thing I'd imagine happening is SpaceX becoming risk averse and profitability focused
Those funds have more capital to allocate to profitable publicly traded companies than they did to speculative bets on unicorns, and more importantly now have an easy offramp if their investment thesis isn't as aligned with the Kardashev scale as the true believers.
The risks they care about will be more "Starlink growth slows" or "orbital datacentre has horrible operating economics" than "Starship launch anomaly" though, and I agree it'll make zero difference to how SpaceX operates both because Elon isn't afraid to tank valuations and because retail loves him unconditionally. And the bull case for SpaceX is still stronger than the bull case for Tesla which happily trades at valuations north of $1b.
Investors have been doing this since SpaceX first raised outside funding. American capital markets are not that risk averse.