Space

You’re comparing a fully finished rocket development program to a half developed rocket.

SLS already did its first flight almost 2 years ago. It successfully delivered a fully functional crew capsule to earth orbit, and that capsule successfully flew around the moon and returned to earth. It was a fully functional rocket that completed all of its mission objectives.

Starship has not delivered itself to any orbit, let alone any useful systems. Flight 3 was “mostly successful” in the same way a crash landing is a landing. The stated goal was a suborbital flight to test booster return, the Pez door(something they are not contracted to develop), in flight fuel transfer, and Ship re-entry.

Starship managed to reach a suborbital altitude and speed. The booster separated and started its return, which ended in it slamming into the ocean at fighter jet speeds. The Pez door got jammed open after its first test, they just didn’t do the fuel transfer test(moving some fuel from a header tank to the main tank) and the ship was out of control and couldn’t be oriented for re-entry. It entered the atmosphere with its heat tiles facing sideways to the atmosphere and promptly disintegrated.

They failed more than half the goals of the flight. Basically everything after stage separation was a failure, and I don’t put much stock in the corporate spin of “everything after cleaning the pad is icing on the cake”

We’re not even talking about the fact that a fully fueled ship that’s supposed to take 100 tons to orbit is incapable of getting itself to orbit. Or that Elon recently announced Starship 2, which is going to be bigger and can take 150 tons to orbit. Starship 2 was not on the development timeline for Artemis.

If Starship ever makes it to orbit, I have no doubt that it will cost just as much as SLS to develop and launch.