The Soviet program had plenty of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

We did accidentally torch the Apollo 1 crew in their capsule.

My fav Apollo-era fuckup is when they tested the launch abort system. The test went bad, but was 100% successful in demonstrating it worked. Heh. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DpdKxv9WINY

Getting to Apollo involved a lot of big booms, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

Over on the nuclear side there was SL1, which AFAICT is probably the answer to the question "why doesn't the US Army have its own nuclear systems?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOt7xDKxmCM .

"Nuclear water hammer" is definitely cringe-inducing.

"Explode until you figure it out" served Falcon 9 well.

I'm inclined to see Constellation/SLS/Orion/etc. as at least as wasteful as the explosions, at least so far. Which one wins out will depend on the end results.

I'd also note Apollo 13 was definitely a failure.

While "explode until you figure it out" worked well on the Falcon 9, it was a lot of taxpayer money to develop a rocket system primarily used to launch their own product at this point - not delivering on price-points they claimed

I might be a little bitter that NASA doesn't get that money instead.

NASA paid to get cargo and people up. Every other provider discarded the first stage.

NASA also got much cheaper launches out of it. They’re just fine.

This is the kind of logic that led the HE to outsource its manufacturing base to China because “Americans got cheaper shit”.

It’s a very reasonable argument for little tchotchkes you sell to tourists but much less so when talking about critical technologies.