
Talk about disingenuous...
This whole paragraph is so slanted it can't stand up straight:
"Starship has been under development for years, and in a handful of test flights has failed to do much but flop over and/or explode. Its most recent test, in May 2021, was the first launch of a full-sized Starship craft that didn't end in an explosion. The May 2021 mission accomplished its goal of a suborbital flight and successful vertical landing, albeit with a small methane fire that burned for around 20 minutes after the craft landed. The craft has been grounded since then, with today's launch the first planned since the successful 2021 test."
* Under development for years- yep, several years. not decades. Not bad in designing, building, and launching a brand new style of rocket.
* Handful of test flights - more than other rocket companies have done with much less ambitious designs.
* failed to do more than flop over and/or explode - that's just wrong. Data. They got data and if you followed the progress you SAW that they were getting better each time. More timely engine relighting, fixing issues with pre-burners, the belly flop, flip and landing maneuver timing, all of it informed by the previous launch and landing attempts. This is rapid, iterative testing in action. And it WORKS.
* The May 2021 mission accomplished its goal of a suborbital flight and successful vertical landing - I'm not going to consider flying up to 10km, hovering there, and then dropping like a stone anything like 'suborbital'. Wrong term.
* The craft has been grounded since then - that's pejorative and assumes there was some kind of regulatory or other limiting factor preventing further tests, that's not the case. SpaceX has been devoting much of the time since then to ground infrastructure construction and continuing to tweak the design of SuperHeavy and Starship. The current mating of B7 and S24 is already obsolete...it's why they have no need to land and reuse them. They want the launch and re-entry data, if they can get it.
Man...you guys do NOT like Musk, do you? Can you at least temper the obvious hostility?