It would also be interesting to see them do shallower dips into the atmosphere then pull back out and repeat. Like a skipping stone. Lots of expansion contraction, but might work better without tiles.
And human rating is a NASA requirement they won’t have to worry about for a few years.
There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.
Hence tens of launches to make the moon and zero payload to orbit in a dozen flights.
This forum is full of fanboys but their arguments don’t hold up to reality. Saturn 5 had men on the mock. This much time and this many rockets in. Starship has launched a dozen times for $15B - over a billion per launch - and it hasn’t made orbit.
Say what you want about SLS, it works.
Musk is a conman and Starship is a failure. Like the F-35 supposed libertarians and conservatives will happily throw money at it until it achieves its targets, after multiple redesigns, and then claim success as if the neigh-sayers weren’t right all along.
