Lets not get ahead of ourselves. The ship hasn't flown once. Also, there is an design issue with the Starship, there is absolutely no redundancy with the fins on the ship. If any of the fins aren't working as planned, prepare for a disaster.
A wing's controls failing (on either vessel) might be recoverable depending on the details/if the other control surfaces can compensate...
Especially in the context of a spacecraft that is specifically designed to be able to quickly gain a long flight history (unlike every other spacecraft we've ever built).
I don't know where the anti-science "it's impossible to speak meaningfully about anything in the future that hasn't yet been built" idea came from in Internet rhetoric, but it's absolutely ridiculous.
Of course Starship has a lot of work to do, but your argument that because it lacks fin redundancy it has a faulty design is invalid.
It's more like comparing a traditional airplane to a B-2 / flying wing design; it's doable, but difficult and not without risk.
Saying it has a "design error" though is the height of arrogance, it's highly unlikely that any commentor here is thinking of anything that SpaceX engineers haven't thought of a hundred times already. Trying to back up that statement with "there is a part that might fail" moves from just being arrogant to also being completely ridiculous. If there is any industry that likes redundancy whenever possible it is the space industry. It has been considered, many times over.
Getting to the moon was based on a mentality of doing things that are barely feasible but could plausibly be done. It had to get done because politics. Your argument is like velcro failing or ball points not working as advertised (too mention some of the lesser innovations from the early space programs). So FF-ing what. Test it and if it really is a problem, fix it. It's not like Aerodynamics are greenfield technology. Some of the people that got us to the moon field tested supersonic airplanes.
Spacex is cutting BS like this and is setting feasible targets that are hard and they are ticking them of at a really scarily insane rate. Reusing first stages? Routine. Dual booster landings? Sure; done, multiple times.
SpaceX is based on the notion that we've already been there & done that and we just need to get better at it. Where better is cheaper, faster, more efficiently. Starship is amazing in the sense that despite being ludicrously big and awesome it has no obvious reasons why it should not work because physics. Therefore the minor investment of even trying to figure out whether this works is a perfectly reasonable thing given the (pun alert) potentially astronomic rewards. And also in the sense of how rapidly it is coming together. We haven't seen this pace of innovation since we actually got to the moon the first time. Just the switch to steel alone is barely 12 months old. Yet the damn thing flew from A to B a few weeks ago and seems on track to run through test to the point where basically it's a production ready system of a scale not seen since the Saturn program four decades ago.
It's hard to not get excited about this "lets just get this thing done" mentality.
This is the time when forward thinking won't hurt. We don't see significant problems with reaching this goal - not technical, not economical, not others. There were periods with development of technology - e.g. early airplanes or spacecrafts - which significantly changed the approaches to things, so speculation in worst case would remain just that.
It applies to basically every aircraft (including Shuttle). And it's dealt with the same way: redundancy of actuation and control systems.
"In the scientific arena, the past decade of experience has taught us that spacecraft are an irreplaceable tool for learning about our near-Earth space environment, the Moon, and the planets, besides being an important aid to our studies of the Sun and stars. In utilizing space to meet needs on Earth, we have seen the tremendous potential of satellites for international communications and world-wide weather forecasting. We are gaining the capability to use satellites as tools in global monitoring and management of nature resources, in agricultural applications, and in pollution control. We can foresee their use in guiding airliners across the oceans and in bringing TV education to wide areas of the world.
However, all these possibilities, and countless others with direct and dramatic bearing on human betterment, can never be more than fractionally realized so long as every single trip from Earth to orbit remains a matter of special effort and staggering expense. This is why commitment to the Space Shuttle program is the right step for America to take, in moving out from our present beach-head in the sky to achieve a real working presence in space - because the Space Shuttle will give us routine access to space by sharply reducing costs in dollars and preparation time.
The new system will differ radically from all existing booster systems, in that most of this new system will be recovered and used again and again - up to 100 times. The resulting economies may bring operating costs down as low as one-tenth of those present launch vehicles."
There's good reason to think that SpaceX might succeed where NASA failed. Less politics interfering. A reward system that is actually aligned with results. Decades (47 years since that announcement) of technological advancement. Experience with re-usable rockets.
yes, SpaceX will make it obsolete with Starship Ultra-Heavy, just as they are attempting to make Falcon 9/Heavy obsolete with Starship...
I won’t be surprised if there is a better solution than a launch escape system, perhaps like a non-rocket launch in the form of a lunar maglev launch track, but it’s probably worth figuring out soon-ish.