The reason he was so skeptical is that for other engine manufacturers, there are generally different teams working on different parts of the engine, and because Convay's law the final artifact generally ends up looking like the organizational boundaries of the company that made it, with cleanly separated parts for every sub-organization that you can see in the final assembly. One of the things that SpaceX is good at is optimization across these kinds of boundaries, integrating hardware in ways that would be difficult for a more traditional organization.

The way it was explained to me early on was that the newest Raptor engines had simply eliminated many of the different types of test sensors, specifically because sufficient testing had been performed that they weren't getting useful data out of them any more.

I'm not some kind of insider, though.

It is confirmed they'll attempt it, hopefully we also get to see it on the broadcast.

> The Starship upper stage will target multiple in-space and reentry objectives, including the deployment of 22 Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The last two satellites deployed will scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship.

This is from the dedicated flight 12 page, not this article. https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12