When the Federal Aviation Administration finally gave SpaceX permission to test its giant rocket, the Starship, space observers breathed sighs of relief.

As video blogger Ellie Sherrif pointed out that although the failures of the seventh and eighth flights seemed to be similar in that the Starship exploded soon after it separated from the Super Heavy first stage, they had completely different root causes, which SpaceX attempted to address for the ninth flight.

Then the question arose: Had SpaceX fixed the problems that had caused failures for both the eighth and seventh tests?

The good news is that SpaceX fixed those problems. Starship did not explode soon after separation from the Super Heavy. But, as so often happens during test flights of cutting-edge rockets, other problems arose.

The ninth test flight of the Starship was a good news/bad news event. The good news: The Starship did not explode over the Gulf soon after separating from the Super Heavy. And the Super Heavy first stage was a reused rocket from the seventh flight. Proving reusability was a big deal toward making SpaceX’s monster rocket a viable launch vehicle. Unlike in previous tests, all of the engines in the Super Heavy remained lit during the ascent phase.

But, as

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