Quantity of launches creates its own quality of wisdom, experience and expertise.
IBM makes tape drives that have been shown to store 540 terabytes. They have them crippled to only store 18tb. They double the capacity every 4 years and release just about the same tech and sell everyone an upgrade. They will sell tape upgrades on this tech for probably 20 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Generations
In a similar vein, it seems like space tech was stuck in one of these ruts where incredibly capital intensive business incumbents just milk their old technologies without innovating. That was at least until Elon showed up.