https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859297019891781652?s=19

The driving thought seems to be, “Whatever gets us to full and rapid reusability in the shortest time”. Not a bad goal. Iterate until something works, then refine to achieve high reliability.

Think Like a Physicist
Assume a Spherical Cow!
https://youtu.be/J-jN1b5V1XI
(9:48)

Jeff Wright: It is called a cow.

I am hearing that transpiration cooling is back on the table.

A couple of papers of note–
“Metal-wool heat shields for space shuttle”
NTRS 19740011469.pdf

–and a similar paper:
https://doi.org/10.2514/1.A34908

Here, 304 stainless is itself used as a heat shield.

For the bones of Starship, Elon may wish to contact Mr. Nuytten of the Nuytco ExoSuit 2000.

He was given permission to use American submarine steel noted for its toughness–which may be useful.

Autoclaves have been useful here–but has anyone used re-entry heating itself to cook a material in flight between two liners?

Grow a single crystal liner–heat during re-entry–then remove outer and inner layers for a one-piece heat shield.

Although having one on each tower would make for one hell of a photograph.

All: In rereading the tweet, I agree with my readers. I misread Musk’s words. He and his company now routinely use “ship” to refer to Starship and “booster” for Superheavy.

I will correct this post.

Or if both towers are ready as Trent suggests, could catch on both.

Am I missing something?

Side note: Landing Ship in the Indian Ocean once more gives the second tower time for completion and checkouts. Flight 8 could see both booster and ship return to launch pad, side by side. Excitement guaranteed!

Anyway, sounds like Elon is acknowledging that the booster catch is no where as important as ship test flights. Sure, all the flight 5 drama served the dual purpose of disempowering the FAA and exciting the public with the spectacular catch visual. But the FAA did authorize Starship test flights back in the summer, after flight 4.