Just for a minute, then, let's think like engineers and not Starman Jones. Granted it was a test flight: so what were the objectives of the flight, how man y of them did it achieve, and how many were not? Get beyond calling it a success or failure and talk about what worked and what didn't.

> the fuel was much easier to work with

This is a technical detail where I hard disagree. The oxidizer was liquid oxygen, so that's the same. The fuels were either RP-1 or hydrogen. Methane is somewhere in between those two in difficulty. kept at -180 °C, compared to -253 °C for hydrogen, and LOX is LOX. In the Saturn V, sloshing of the RP-1 led to the Pogo Effect, but that was solved[1]. Granted it didn't involve the maneuvers of the Starship first stage, but in some ways it was worse, because it happened during full thrust at the end of the boost stage, not after separation. You can read a lot more about NASA's experience with pogo at [2], but it's worth noting that it continued to crop up as late as Apollo 13, when the 2nd stage center engine shut down early as a result.

Yes, SpaceX is doing some things new, but the engineering experience is definitely something from the 50s and 60s.

1. https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-ago-solving-the-pogo-e...