these tests are designed to fail — the data collected now will ensure they don't blow up with actual people on them. test seems like a success to me

Still a failure in my book, it blew up before it could deliver its payload so they couldn't do many the tests they intended to do.

It is possible they will have to add one more test launch to their schedule, delaying commercial operations because of that.

It is not a complete failure, but to me, it is more failure than success, even by SpaceX test flight standards.

Compared to the previous flight, that I consider a success, the booster catch was nice, but it is not the first, and they have plenty of tries left to perfect it, so it is not in the critical path.

they didn't get the telemetry after, what it was, 16 min(?) hope they'll find the reason which will be hard without black boxes like on airplanes. as every engineer knows it works flawlessly only at the end. if ever.

the booster was the same, great, but not surprising.

IIRC they had 30 cameras on board & who knows how many sensors (probably hudreds ?).

So even if an engine bay fire burned the electronics and interrupted all coms (or FTS blew it up) they should already have a lot of data by that point showing how it went wrong.

Let us say 2/3rds of a failure.

SpaceX has a way of making the nearly impossible expected. We have forgotten quite quickly that booster catch is still a very experimental feature. Return to base on this flight wasn't routine yet.

You're assuming the viewer count is accurate? That seems rather naive.

Almost a complete failure except for second ever caught first stage...

BTW they first tested a redesigned version of Starship today.

Booster works, we've seen that before. No satellites deployment, no new heat shield test. Separation works. But that's it.

Now the 'funniest' thing, this piece falls back where the ships are waiting. I hope it will miss this time too.

The ships are on the other side of the planet, near Australia. They’ll be fine.

Didn't expect it to disintegrate completely. At least they figured out what happened. Well, one step at a time. But that means no orbital flight for next couple of missions.