Lots of missing tiles still. Best case is it's all infant mortality and replacing just those tiles will result in a durable heat shield for many more flights. Worst case is every flight loses that many tiles and the ablative underneath can't be reflown until replacement.

I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing a heat shield refurbishment attachment to the launch tower that allows technicians to access the side of the ship to patch up between flights without leaving the pad. They're going to need some kind of solution for the many back-to-back HLS refueling flights.

They've intentionally flown a number of times with missing heat tiles in sensitive spots, and many of those don't have the ablative coating. One of the benefits of steel over aluminium.

Musk tweet:

“We got all the heat shield data we needed and then some! ”

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2080812297694409014