This (the crash, not the revocations) might be the worst, most embarrassing outcome for the FAA. Had the stunt gone completely right they could have just put the hammer down on the pilots and said "it could have gone wrong and people could have got hurt!". But we got to see what happened when things went wrong. We saw, even in failure, no one got hurt, and it doesn't seem like anyone was close to getting hurt. Is this luck or were the pilots right the entire time, planning for failure and ensuring no one would be harmed even if they failed? Still doesn't excuse them for going forward despite the exemption being rejected, but a successful failure raises doubt as to the FAA's ability to evaluate risk, which only compounds the current Trent Palmer situation.