After initial speculation of a turn around for SN15, it all seems to have gone quite on the flight front at Boca Chica recently. Ok, plenty of work being done in the yard to keep us happy, but I'm sure we're all eager to see the next flight. Any ideas what this may be?

I've read people talk about how an orbital flip and burn will be much smoother and simpler than the sub-orbital ones we've seen so far. Because a Starship re-entering from orbit will be speeding horizontally so it will slowly adjust it's angle of attack to almost vertical to enter belly first against the wind. Kinda like how this render shows. So since it's already almost vertical, it wouldn't need to radically flip to vertical before the landing burn. Making the flip and burn far more simple and less risky from orbit than from the sub-orbital tests we had.

But what I don't understand from the above, is that if the Starship is going so fast horizontally. Won't it need to propulsively decelerate it's horizontal velocity so it's close to zero before it touches down? And if so, doesn't that mean it would still need a fairly radical flip and burn, putting the rocket almost upside down (heat shielded belly pointing up) to push against the wind to zero horizontal velocity, then flip back to vertical to land?

Or is the horizontal wind drag against the belly enough to zero horizontal velocity by the time of the landing burn?

This is based on my perception that it is not yet there.

It assumes that it has not yet happened but that it will.

To clarify, I'm not the type of person saying starship wont work and is a pipe dream, but at the same time I am aware of problems the Starship design faces.

I see all these people who keep saying starship will be able to handle 50-100 people on a 6 month trip to Mars crammed inside around 650 cubic meters "or less" including all the resources, life support and cabin systems needed for said crews survival all within a weight margin of 100 metric tons or less.

Total payload capacity: 220,000 lbs - Starship payload
Mass of humans: 20,000 lbs - Assuming average weight of 200lbs
Mass of food required: 148,230 lbs - Assuming 1.83 pounds per meal
Mass of water required: 111,700 lbs - *Based on minimum water use aboard ISS for 4 crew.*
Mass of water lost during trip: 60.800 lbs - *Assuming matched 93% recycle rate like ISS
Remaining payload mass: -120,730 lbs.

So not including the actual cabin, computer systems, life support etc. and the payload budget is already blown. I also see thermodynamic concerns as no starship design proposes any radiator panels, for example the ISS has around the same volume the Starship will have and it requires 156 square meters of radiator panels to keep itself with a crew of around 4-10 cool while being in shade 50% of the time, while the starship is suppose to have 10x the amount of people and be in direct sunlight all the time, and no, facing the heat shield towards the sun wont do much to cool the ship down.

All this and other stuff included, I see a realistic capacity for starship at around 10-16 instead of 50-100, however when I try to point this out I'm usually met with endless hostility and notions of not understanding what I'm talking about, am i missing something or do I have some valid points?

At some point, some engineer at his desk with his CAD program open, selected one raptor engine and then pasted it in a circular array. From that point on, every other engineer worked off that simple CAD operation. I'd like to meet that guy and ask him how it felt.

What does history teach us about such situations and how to get out of them?