Comment by sneak
15 hours ago
Plausible? It was always plausible. This flight does nothing to increase or decrease that - it is still very much a wide open question. The goal is full rapid reusability, and nothing we have seen yet suggests that that is possible, because no Starship has flown twice, much less re-entered twice with the same non-refurbished tiles.
It may be that the heat shield is the thing that causes them to miss the BHAG. Starship will still be cool if it needs all-new tiles every flight but let’s not pretend that that would be anything but a miss for the program.
I sure hope they can figure it out.
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