@Tempest - it seems to be their design / build / test /redesign philosophy - its all new - new engines, new ship, new tech. reading online about all this stuff looks like they will jump to SN15 - as the design is different (so sn10 will pop out, but then maybe goto 15).
The new raptors have a different paint colour, which people are speculating that it is a new coating that has been added as they have learnt about the tech and the testing.
Anyhow - im loving it - the chance to see real development take place.
Oh yes, and for sure, they are learning and improving all the time
It's just the Raptor Engines don't really seem to be like that.
It's not like they are trying number 12 and it's a bit iffy so putting number 13 or 14 in instead.
It feels like they must be fitting the ones they think will be fine, trying them, and have issues so swapping them out for two different ones and then trying them.
Feels a bit more haphazard to me.
They'd not fit older ones onto SN9 then have to swap two of them out on purpose.
So they must have problems? As opposed to just not the latest version.
Which is fine if you are just needing 2, 3, 5 or so.
But when you getting up to needing 28 of them all to work, you need to go from pretty iffy right now, to almost 100% perfect, else you'd be spending all your time swapping over trying to find 28 good ones.
Not sure how long SuperHeavy is off, but they seem a long long way away from Raptors that are almost all perfect every time
Of course we're not being told about the swapouts so who knows why it's being done.
Either way I'm loving this, and accept we're going to have failures along the way.
And just because SN8 did everything right apart from the last bit, does not mean SN9 won't go poof along the way.
I'm totally glued to the screen whatever happens, and love watching reactions by others afterwards also