They're probably gonna keep wasting ships until they've got the exact limits of their capability established.

I know it seems counterintuitive to everyone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, but the ship is the cheap part, the giant booster is the expensive part.

The ship has a way longer cycle time so starship unit costs are going to dominate fleet construction cost despite being the cheaper unit so knowing exactly how hard you can run them is very valuable information it's worth gleaning by wasting some units early on.

given one of the flight control wings was melting on the way back in I suspect you're right.

I expect them to start catching the booster more often tho.