Yes, although it was stated before the flight that they were intentionally flying with some heat tiles removed and with a more aggressive profile to test some outer limits.
> I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure.
That's the advantage of being privately owned. "Vibes" (hah) don't matter. Public opinion doesn't matter. What matters is executing on your vision / goals. And they're doing that.
The fact that they're bringing in loads of cash from Starlink surely helps. They haven't had the need to raise money in a while, now.
Bingo they aren’t anywhere near the solution to return the investment and will be raising debt or begging for more government money. They will be (progressively) nationalized to justify the additional cash infusions to keep the mission from being a complete failure. NASA wants their moon base I guess.
I've seen worse from SpaceX haters. I've had a "conversation" here on HN by someone who claimed that SpaceX doesn't land boosters anymore for example. Conspiracy theories basically.
That's probably the first step on the path to stagnation.
There's a lot more eyes on them now a days, and Musk is much more well known, so it creates a lot more drama - but they've done the exact same process with everything. They even published a montage of failures [1] on the way to their first successful landing 'back in the day.' It was fiery, but mostly peaceful. They didn't even hit a shark!
Unless they took extra risks to hedge against the string of failures continuing. "Yes we blew up three times in a row, but this time we meant to do that, so it's a success" sounds an awful lot better than "We did everything we possibly could to prevent it from blowing up this time but it still did"
I'm certain they don't care about the narrative because ultimately even though yesterday was a big success some places had headlines that really downplayed it
