Starship's Tenth Flight Test

I think Scott Manley's position on the "still hasn't gotten to orbit" take is probably still the best and most accurate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM&t=420s

What Scott is missing is that the only reason "it did not get to orbit" is of interest at all is that SpaceX keeps claiming they got to orbit with starship. I believe that the trajectories have all been suborbital by design, but it still pisses me off that they keep claiming they got to orbit.

The reason this matters is that if they get into an orbit in a short test, they need to exit that orbit with some sort of active system. So the statement "we got to orbit" implies a lot more technology development than the current flights actually show. I agree with Scott that Starship can easily enter LEO, but I am not so sure it can exit gracefully.

Is it really a lot more technology? If they were landing 100 km away I'd agree, but aren't they basically reaching the required orbital speed and reentering and landing under retrorocket control? I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, so I might be missing something important.

They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster.

Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying they still haven't reached orbit is a bit silly. They're clearly technically able to reach orbit if they really want to... that they haven't proved they can safely leave orbit is the problem.