You can also get some rocket fuel-systems specific problems like Pogo oscillations, where the fuel pressure is oscillating and causes problems. But I've no idea if that's related to what happened here.

These are hard problems to diagnose (as they happen in space), but often quite easy to solve.

It's part of the fuel system, but the problem is purely mechanical, and the same analysis as structures is needed. They ran some long ground runs on the engines (to test these vibrations) but likely didn't get the same behaviour as in space. But they will have had more sensors/cameras on flight 8.

That /was/ one of the biggest hurdles, yes. They've launched the booster 8 times, 33 engines each time, with only a few failures. The tech is now over 10 years old as you say. Think they have mostly solved that problem. The remaining problems with the vehicle seem solvable.

I use BS the same way I used twitter - to follow some topics in more detail via Lists. This topic is something I'm actually an expert in, so thought I'd chime in.

The biggest problem I see with Starship is that Musk has no interest real in Mars (that's just a cover). Its designed to launch the Starlink v2 (or v3) satellites to connect directly to mobile phones. That could give him a global monopoly on internet access😬. This is why Bezos is also into rockets.

Vibration problems are caused by resonance, where a source frequency (eg engine) matches a natural frequency of some structure. A small bracket or extra bolt is enough to change a natural freq (like moving a finger on a guitar). Vibrations plummet if the freqs don't match.

Aerospace engineer of 12+ years: a few problems with this article, even if fascist Elon's failures are nice to see. Vibration levels are not linked to payload. The mass of the vehicle does not need to increase dramatically to solve vibration problems.