Comment by anonymars
14 hours ago
It seems premature at best to make any sort of triumphant comparison, when Starship has yet to complete an orbit of the Earth while SLS has carried humans to the moon
It's especially ironic to talk about not landing on the moon yet, when it is the landing system--aka Starship!--which is the primary bottleneck for that goal
I am in no way trying to make this some SpaceX vs NASA pissing contest, but there seems to be a tendency to overvalue Starship's promised achievements to SLS's real ones
They could have made orbit at any time on any flights that reached space. they have deliberately not done so because that is the safest thing to do when developing.
I don't see how that gives them credit. Yes of course they could have burned the engines for a little longer and reached orbit
Were they confident that they could relight the engines and get it back out of orbit? This very test seemed to answer "no"