Using actuators not only adds unneeded weight to the vehicle, it’s adding more modes for failure, more complexity and occupying more volume. I can’t speak to the pointing accuracy of the actuators either. With the servos you can always tell where they are pointed, how many motor turns it took and how much current they drew during the move. Now for all I know they do have tachometers in the motors for the actuators and are able to track motor turns and such, but it is in the mechanical linkages to the wheel steering gear is where things are going to start to lose their accuracy.

Now the steering gear aside, everything about this machine does say prototype to me, it is just a rolling testbed as far as I can see and is most certainly not the vehicle they intend to launch. I can only assume that they will adopt a more conventional architecture for the actual flight vehicle. If not, then I would not be surprised to be reading a headline here on BTB to the effect of “I told you so” some two and a half to three years down the line, if it ever does launch.