I'm not sure where you're getting the billions in taxpayer cost per rocket. It sounds like to date SpaceX has spent a few billion on the whole program. They did

I'm not sure where you're getting the billions in taxpayer cost per rocket. It sounds like to date SpaceX has spent a few billion on the whole program. They did receive a ~$3B contract for Artemis, but as I understand it, that's a fixed rate for delivery of a functional spacecraft, regardless of how many they lose in development. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship It's also making meaningful progress with each launch. Comparing it to Saturn V seems like apples and oranges. This is a functional full flow liquid fueled rocket and booster at the current stage of development. They've also always been open about an iterative development approach (i.e. blow up more rockets). It's not Saturn V, so I'm not sure why we'd expect the same number of launches during development? Seems like a pretty arbitrary metric.