Saturn V had several close calls, ever hear of POGO? Apollo 13?
Something you really aren't getting is that the sort of development SpaceX does expects failure during development. They were on booster 7 and ship 24 and most of the ones they have build have been scrapped without ever being used. Yes, 100% reliability is the most important goal, but they also need reusability and affordability.
If operational costs and availability are not important, you do what NASA does and pick a bad design, mostly for political reasons, then spend a crap-ton of money only on reliability. They don't care if it costs a billion dollars to launch and can only launch every five years. What they care about is not looking bad on TV so they can please armchair quarterbacks like you.
Also... What happened to Saturns 1-4... This was Elon’s SA–1–4...