Recover the Starship upper stage intact in 2025

The promise: “We just want—if we can get the damn ship back intact, we can iterate a lot better. I think we'll get it back intact this year. We might be able to refly one with a fair bit of work by the end of this year.” · Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Feb 28, 2025) — get the ship 'back intact this year' ↗

Deadline passed. Said on JRE #2281 (Feb 28, 2025), so 'this year' = 2025. SpaceX never recovered a Starship upper-stage SHIP intact in 2025. Across all 2025 flights the ship was either destroyed or, at best, did a controlled ocean splashdown and was NOT brought back: Flight 7 (Jan 16) ship exploded over Turks & Caicos; Flight 8 (Mar 6) ship lost attitude control and was lost; Flight 9 (May 27, Ship 35) broke up on re-entry; Flight 10 (Aug 26) made a powered splashdown in the Indian Ocean (not recovered); Flight 11 (Oct 13, the final flight of 2025) softly splashed down in the Indian Ocean then tipped over and exploded. Only the Super Heavy BOOSTER was caught by the tower during 2025 — catching the booster ≠ recovering the ship. No ship was caught by the tower or returned to land intact in 2025. The 'get it back intact this year' milestone was MISSED. Wikipedia: SpaceX Starship — 2025 flight test outcomes (Flights 7-11; all ships expended/lost, none recovered intact) ↗

Status: Missed · 169 days past due. Never happened.