The wright brothers crashed very early on too, and look where we are today
edit: not to mention the trillions of daily ground crashes of regular cars (which will continue until the hardware and software is perfected they drive themselves)
and there were closeminded folks that SWORE man would never go into space or land on the moon. I'm surprised Tesla hasn't jumped on this bandwagon yet, but I learned in the business news today they've been throwing resources at battery powered train technology for the green crowd in California