I’m struggling to think of a reason that Starship shouldn’t be grounded for 6-12 months after this (I know they won’t be, but I’ll be mad about it). This is a consecutive uncontrolled failure during the “easy” part of the flight over a highly populated region. It seems like pure luck that the RUD didn’t happen early enough to impact land. They’re still doing a great job, but today was rough.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the Texas plans?

Edit: Upon reflection I’m less pessimistic now, as long as the FTS behaved reasonably. But I’ll still be mad if they’re flying again in a month.

If it’s only the on-screen flap that had issues, hopefully that points to a minor fix instead of a major one. I wonder what sort of data they have on this. How many thermal tiles were lost on each flap? Where did the issues start? Are the other flaps alright? Hard things to track.

I’m sure it’s reasonable, but I’m deeply unsettled by the thought that someone is going to press a “depressurize our entire spacecraft” button.

Excited for more details though!