Shuttle had the unfortunate combination of fragile indivudally unique (!) tiles glue to lightweight aluminum structure that would fail if heated to 175 C (!!) [

Shuttle had the unfortunate combination of fragile indivudally unique (!) tiles glue to lightweight aluminum structure that would fail if heated to 175 C (!!) [0], even in a small area. In comparison Starship is covered by mostly identical tiles attached to hull welded from milimeters thick (internet data indicates something between 4 and 2 mm thick & often multiplied in important places) steel plate. The steel hull has demonstrated surviving missing tiles just fine - and during earlier flight even multiple burn throughs on the flaps with bits falling off and even back then Starship completed simulated landing to the ocean (including the flip manuever and landing burn!). So even if SpaceX does not perfect rapid reusability of Starship immediately, they would still have hands down the best orbital launcher in the world, with the option of populating new Starship hulls with reused engines, acuators and avionics for the time being. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protection_system#Purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_thermal_protecti...