But Elon is not trying to do those things because his team knows that they just cannot do them. It is pretty clear by now that Starship V1 cannot take a single pound of payload to the lowest low earth orbit. Will V2 and V3 will fare any better? We have only Elon's promises for that...
Elon received some 4 billion US$ from the gov to develop Starship. THAT is the number one should compare to the cost of the SLS.