It's a different style of development. SLS burned an absurd amount of money and spent over a decade making sure that the first launch went relatively well, bec

It's a different style of development. SLS burned an absurd amount of money and spent over a decade making sure that the first launch went relatively well, because they can't afford to have visible failures, in part because people are stupid when it comes to testing, and in part because they can only build them fast enough to launch once every other year (unless they're given another ridiculous sum of money and another decade to build more infrastructure). Starship is testing iteratively, so they spend less money up front to figure out everything before flying, and instead put in a reasonable effort ahead of time and then just fly to figure out what needs improvement. They can afford to do this, because they are designing for mass prduction and because as a private company, they don't have to answer to the ignorant public. Building a new Starship stack is a matter of months, and they're more limited by the rate at which they can test and get through paperwork to launch the things than the rate at which they can build them. For reference, SLS launched in 2022 and next might launch in 2025, Starship had a close to orbital velocity launch in March (it effectively proved they can get to orbit, it was not actually orbital so as to avoid leaving debris stuck in orbit until they can prove the ability to deorbit) and is expected to launch again in late May/early June.