Yes, absolute success. All primary mission objectives achieved successfully AND all but one secondary objective achieved. Launch, ascent, MECO, controlled descent, turn and re-orient with nose thrusters, fire engines, decelerate, position over landing pad, in correct orientation, AND, most importantly, capture all mission telemetry and data until after ground contact.
As a mere spectator, I'll add they achieved ALL my additional personal objectives, including: end-to-end live video/audio transmission from multiple onboard and ground tracking cameras, conveniently streamed in the late afternoon for free, near-instant pre and post-test insights direct from Elon via Twitter, AND a perfectly-framed SPECTACULAR live explosion in HD to cap it all off. From my (somewhat self-centered) perspective, how could it have been any more successful?
As for your "losing money" question, I'm not sure that's much of a factor with SN8 because it was a test article not expected to probably survive. It didn't even have final or complete flight systems. If it had remained more intact after landing, perhaps they could have reused some raw materials eventually for future test articles but that also requires extensive inspection to re-validate, disassemble and integrate - all of which would consume scarce schedule time, assembly space and the limited time of skilled personnel able to build final Starships. IHMO, SpaceX wisely prioritizes speed and learning over testing costs or PR optics.
The biggest unexpected cost may just be the "cleanup on aisle SN8" but they probably didn't expect SN8 would reach the landing pad as on-target as it did and may have budgeted even more time/money for clean-up than they'll need since it was pretty dang tidy for a RUD. I guess an over-water loss might be a bit faster/cheaper to reset but then they would have lost higher priority objectives and we wouldn't have had such a SWEET front-row ticket to the finale :-).
It's not just "cleanup" - they would probably reuse the raptors and maybe batteries/ other stuff too. Losing 3 raptors is probably what hurts the most at this point (but it wasn't unexpected). All in all, the test was most definitely a success.
I'm not sure they'd even reuse them, they're still tweaking the design. The Raptors that flew yesterday were probably already outdated; the ones on SN9 are improved versions already.
It is a great success. They launched the Starship on 3 Raptors, most importantly perfectly controlled the descend and correctly executed the flip and vertical landing. If the fuel pressure had been correct, even the landing would have worked, but that is a really small thing to correct.
The main thing, and that is why it was a success, was the in-flight control, especially on the descent and before the landing. Only real loss was 3 engines they might have reused otherwise. But as the Starships themselves are extremely cheap to build - the next one is already mostly finished - it was basically considered expendable for the test.
Beyond understanding and fixing the fuel pressure issue, they just can proceed with their testing plans as scheduled.
Huge Success. This is a prototype. It was going to be thrown away next week regardless. Obviously long term the landing is very important. Just not today.
SN 9 is ready for testing in the next few weeks and has more design changes they need to test, so SN 8 is no longer needed. On the other hand the loss of the engines is a shame. They are by far the most expensive part of the vehicle and could have been used in later vehicles.
They could do more part verification, but it might take twice the time and 3 times the money for the same insights. Just launch some prototypes and see what happens.
I'm pretty sure a successful landing was one of the goals. It just might have been a "nice to have"-kind of goal.
During prototyping there's only one type of test that isn't a success: a test that fails for a previously known reason (e.g. repeating a known mistake or some external factor like earthquakes, flooding or weather) and that you learned nothing from.
Fair question, I think one of their goals is to maximize the lessons/takeaways they get from minor failures like this and be able to recalibrate effectively on the next launches.
Just like bare scientific method of trial and error.
“Fail early, fail often” may actually be cheaper in the long run than never running actual tests until you’ve run enough simulations and analysis to satisfy yourself the test will not fail. If you accept that premise, this test can definitely be viewed as a complete success, since they got telemetry from every phase of operation and know exactly what to improve for the next test.
That's something entirely different, though. Test to destruction/failure is done to check or verify the limits of a systems.
This test on the other hand was a test with a low change of complete success and thus failure was an expected and acceptable - but not the intended - outcome.
I take your point but if this flight had landed they would have probably kept test flying SN-8 until it did crash. There is really no other use for it.
I'm sure there's some cost in cleaning up the scrap and repairing any damage to the facility. But it's a prototype, and I think this was the only flight planned for this one.
As a mere spectator, I'll add they achieved ALL my additional personal objectives, including: end-to-end live video/audio transmission from multiple onboard and ground tracking cameras, conveniently streamed in the late afternoon for free, near-instant pre and post-test insights direct from Elon via Twitter, AND a perfectly-framed SPECTACULAR live explosion in HD to cap it all off. From my (somewhat self-centered) perspective, how could it have been any more successful?
As for your "losing money" question, I'm not sure that's much of a factor with SN8 because it was a test article not expected to probably survive. It didn't even have final or complete flight systems. If it had remained more intact after landing, perhaps they could have reused some raw materials eventually for future test articles but that also requires extensive inspection to re-validate, disassemble and integrate - all of which would consume scarce schedule time, assembly space and the limited time of skilled personnel able to build final Starships. IHMO, SpaceX wisely prioritizes speed and learning over testing costs or PR optics.
The biggest unexpected cost may just be the "cleanup on aisle SN8" but they probably didn't expect SN8 would reach the landing pad as on-target as it did and may have budgeted even more time/money for clean-up than they'll need since it was pretty dang tidy for a RUD. I guess an over-water loss might be a bit faster/cheaper to reset but then they would have lost higher priority objectives and we wouldn't have had such a SWEET front-row ticket to the finale :-).