I've only returned to the hobby for the last 7 or 8 months now, have built 20+ rockets (mostly LPR but a handful of MPR & HPR), successfully certified Level1, & have been to about a half dozen organized club launches. I've read several comments in various threads/website/r.m.r posts about how they feel that the show(s) seemed to focus more on the failure than the successes but I tend to disagree...
Failure seems to carry more weight because of the pain/frustration/expense/lessons learned with an unsuccessful flight. We all take failure personally & don't take kindly to people pointing them out to us. Similarly, poker players can win countless hands & money often never remembering how yet they
never forget the hand where they bet everything & lost...
Look at the shows again with a newbie's perspective...
How many of the ~5 bowling ball rockets had problems?
(answer: 1, but only because of a hard landing...)
How many of the 8ft rockets that 6 teams built on-site had problems during flight?
(answer: ZERO)
Did the 55ft rocket fly?
(answer: Yes. OK, so you could argue that it did so barely...)
How many of the ~6 supersonic rockets suffered in-flight shreds?
(answer: 1, maybe 2--I was distracted by the wife during that part but I couldn't have missed more than 1 launch but I know that there was 1 shred)
Did all 288 Mosquitos/Quarks launch simultaneously?
(answer: 282 did although it took 3 tries--BUT THINK OF ALL THAT WIRING!)
And *many* more (sorry I don't have exact counts) of the rockets that the large teams launched were successful than failed. IMO, the Nike Smoke failure/injury left me with the importance of safety & standards for the hobby more than the disappointment of failure. I'd "guesstimate" that the success/failure rate on the show was 90/10%. That seems to be about on par with the club launches I've been to...
I feel that the importance of the show was to display the complexity, power, & enthusiasm of the rockets & the builders. At that level, I think the show was very successful
I like how they investigated the failures to see WHY they happened. Sure it would've been great to have seen more children & LPR stuff but our culture typically has the "bigger + faster = better" mindset & if that's what has to be done to attract new blood, then so be it!