[dragonsky67]

I love that they are deliberately tempting failures with the no and thin tiles.

In a lot of ways they will learn far more from the heat shield burn through around the flap(s) than they would have if they had been "lucky" and it had all gone perfectly.

You during testing you want things to fail, that is the point of testing. If it's all successful you only learn that under those conditions your design works, but if it fails, you learn another way to not do things.

[GuB-42]

That's an often underappreciated aspect of engineering.

When parts last longer than expected, it is considered something that needs "fixing". It is a signal that the part can be made cheaper, lighter, etc... If SpaceX had gone with heavy, thick tiles, and they did their job because they were overspecced, it is that much less payload capacity.

Even value engineering, which is often criticized when it comes to consumer products is a good thing. Yes, your new dishwasher is not as robust as the one made in the 50s, but it is also 10x cheaper (inflation-adjusted), and it can still wash dishes for maybe 10-15 years without repairs, at which point you may want a new one as technology has improved. Note that I am talking proper engineering, having a single point of failure that prompts a replacement is planned obsolescence and terrible engineering, there should be no single point of failure with good engineering.

[jjk166]

As they say, any idiot can make a bridge stand, it takes an engineer to make a bridge barely stand.

[rbanffy]

It'll still be orders of magnitude cheaper than the nearest competitor for many years. They don't need to fix it before gaining very extensive experience flying it.