Well they need a plan in case the thing takes off. If you look at the objective: "SpaceX intends to collect as much data as possible during flight to quantify

Well they need a plan in case the thing takes off. If you look at the objective: "SpaceX intends to collect as much data as possible during flight to quantify entry dynamics and better understand what the vehicle experiences in a flight regime that is extremely difficult to accurately predict or replicate computationally. This data will anchor any changes in vehicle design or CONOPs after the first flight and build better models for us to use in our internal simulations." From https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=273481 https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=273481 It doesn't say the objective is "fly across earth".