>>12989300Because that's just Engadget being retard "horse race both sides" ""journalists"". Every advanced R&D program "encounters problems" and they all used to have lots of crashes and blowing up of prototypes too, because that was the only way to learn. Now people have gotten used to lazy fat LE COST-PLUS FACE space companies that spend 20 years doing computer models for billions of dollars before ever making anything and then having to work around any problems they find, rather then just spending a few million doing some basic modeling and engineering, doing a cheap prototype, and testing in real life. Rapid iteration on something new is a good thing, not bad thing.
Also, all the rockets have GONE UP just fine. Which is the only thing NASA cares about here. The plan right now is that SpaceX makes the lunar rocket, which only needs to go up, rendezvous with Orion, then take them down to the moon and back to Orion, which then handles the actual return to Earth. And on the moon there is no flip or main engine use at all even just small thrusters, no atmosphere and too low gravity. So Starship working on landing on Earth via advanced aerobreaking maneuver literally isn't NASA's problem.
Remember, it took SpaceX a lot of tries to land Falcon 9 too. But landing wasn't a customer deliverable, just getting their shit to orbit. SpaceX cared since it'd make them more profit, but all the "encountering problems" they had didn't matter to people paying the bills at all since the alternative was "it dumps into the ocean anyway".
