[Tacopuck]

The whole starship program is based on volume of launches. Meaning they wont have have only like10 rockets they use in the long run, so part of the development program is actually the supply chain and manufacturing so 100's of rockets can be produced (I think the ratio is ~3 Ships per booster). From that since the design is iterative blowing up the rockets is not actually bad as SpaceX mentioned before if they didn't actually blow up they would have a massive 'graveyard' of old unusable rockets (as the design changes each iteration and it doesn't make sense to modify old designs expect perhaps at a small component level).

Making the program design needing lots of rockets allows them to iterate in every area of the design, manufacturing and launching lifecycles drastically lowering the costs of every area. I cant find the reference but I believe a booster manufacturing cost is close 3-5 mil right now and they hope to bring it down to 1 mil. Not sure what the cost of starship is at right now however.