Good point. I wasn't really thinking what i meant by "the critical path". I was probably assuming the path to a vehicle & system working (at least qualitatively) as designed - including full reusability.

But now that I think about it, probably the thing that matters most to SpaceX is launching at least one ship during the next Mars transfer window, in order to test their Martian EDL approach. (The critical path to making life multi-planetary?) And for that I guess booster reuse is much(?) more important than ship reuse. Or to put it another way, currently for Starship, Mars EDL is the main goal, and Earth EDL only matters to the extent it helps with that goal.

I should've realized this without your question, because after Flight 4 I decided that it was now likely they would be ready by early 2027 - even if they did struggle with reusability. (I think even after Flight 3 we had grounds to reach this conclusion.)

So I now say that this decision is probably not a mistake.

N.B. When I say I think they'll be ready by early 2027, I mean from an engineering PoV. I'm excluding politics and such. What if a NASA science team decides they don't want Starship to contaminate Mars, and Trump doesn't feel like helping Musk overturn that decision?

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

No flaps and no heatshield would give a decent payload increase too.