[samatman]

There's a lot of middle ground here. I suspect what's most accurate is "let's push the booster out of envelope a bit, if we get really nice numbers we'll go for the chopsticks landing, otherwise it's into the drink".

In other words, they were optimistic enough to think that another upright landing was within the realm of possibility, while also deliberately doing things which made that outcome less likely, to get the data they need.

If that's true, I wouldn't characterize it as a second attempt at a chopstick land, that would just be a stretch goal. Who knows if it is, but it's consistent with how SpaceX operates.

[zamadatix]

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

> During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt.

Surely you aren't saying there is middle ground in the way the tower is being tested that caused the abort of the booster landing?

[samatman]

No, but I'm neither omniscient nor able to see into the future. It's not clear to me that the sentence you're referring to had been posted 18 hours ago, and in any case, I hadn't seen it.