This is a huge milestone for the Starship team and SpaceX, so massive congratulations. This was also fun to watch. Fun in part because while SpaceX had it on "

This is a huge milestone for the Starship team and SpaceX, so massive congratulations. This was also fun to watch. Fun in part because while SpaceX had it on "tape delay" the enthusiast channels were showing it live. It will be fun to have them do it without the low cloud cover but I'm guessing that without the disassembly at the end they may have some on-board recordings that are recoverable. To whomever does telemetry for these things, the frequency bands you are using are blocked by clouds. It makes it hard to keep a live signal. Ask the FCC for a temporary operating permit for 900Mhz or so. You will be much happier with the results. I was paying close attention to the area of 'heat shield' tiles. That is the next really big hurdle. If you recall getting the grid fins on F9 to survive re-entry was a big challenge. Getting tiles that don't break because the various expansion coefficients don't match is a big challenge as well. That is critical to having enough fuel left over to stop when you get back down inside the gravity well. It is easy to forget the scale of this thing without visual cues but its like flying skyscrapers around. They are very big. And the booster will be larger still. Also super curious how the lunar lander version will work. That is awfully high up there, could be a long ladder down to the surface. That, and given its mass, means that when it lands on the moon the dust it kicks up will hit escape velocity[1] which will be interesting. All in all though, so much progress in space after so much non-progress. Quite the thrill! [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.12312 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.12312