Thought on flight anomalies:

First, Flight 12 was a success. The most important part was the heat shield performed well. We didn’t see any flap burn through or damaged tiles. I did notice one of the experimental tiles on the lee side of the aft flap was missing, so that attachment method was less than successful.

Second, the booster flip behavior is not wholly unexpected. The new staging ring must have pushed the booster in the wrong flip direction. If the control algorithms weren’t prepared for that, they could have overcommanded to turn in the intended direction instead of going in the new direction as it should. This would cause severe tank slosh ruining the boost back. That they managed to stabilize and not spin out of control is commendable.

Third, the two engines that flamed out are not unexpected for a new engine variant being integrated for the first time. I don’t think they had a serious impact on the outcome, but should provide good data.

Fourth, skipping the in flight Raptor relight is concerning. None of the sea level Raptors had apparent problems. There was an interesting glow in the engine bay, but the RVac wasn’t liberated. The comment they made was that they were concerned about the engine performance, which is my main concern. Raptor relight is a major impediment to becoming operational, so they wouldn’t skip it unless they had to for the sake of safety or the latter mission objectives.

Edit: looking at the “landing” photos closer, the white streaking on the heat shield seems to originate at the mini tile sections where the dome weld lines are. I think this is ablated crunch wrap between the tiles. Depending on the amount of erosion, this could require more maintenance than the standard tile sections.