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Turns out that stars are really friggin' far away, so with a nice steady plane and some stabilization equipment, you're not going to get enough parallax for streaking to occur.

Hi, streaking is not necessarily due to parallax. It's due to movement of the camera and or movement of the earth. (Try taking a hand held long exposure of the stars, for example).

I guess for that 8s the plan was very stable (no rolling/pitching) AND the focal length is short enough and the resolution low enough the streakiness is masked. I'm still impressed by the amount of stars he captured.

See my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8225519

(TLDR: consider (a) how the moon does not appear to move when viewed from a car moving in a straight line, and (b) that the surface of the Earth is constantly moving at ~1,000 MPH.)

No, planes don't rotate much when flying - it would be inefficient. Also, it is using a 10mm lens.

An 8s exposure with a 10mm lens will not show trails at the resolutions shown there.