NASA's rockets back in the 60s cost a few orders of magnitude more than what a SpaceX rocket costs, and they had their fair share of crashes in their beginning stages, and faced massive criticism for the waste of money.
And the rockets that got people to the Moon back in the 60s were single-use monsters and every mission was the equivalent of starting your journey in a jumbo jet and chopping it down bit by bit along the way until you return home on a bicycle, and then buying a new jet for the next trip.
SpaceX is taking the blueprints of the Space Shuttle and improving upon them by testing multiple-use rockets (instead of the incredibly expensive single-use booster rockets and fuel tanks that the Space Shuttle depended on) that are designed with modern materials and knowledge. It's not just a matter of taking the original design and then remaking it in new materials (I mean look at how that went for that submarine guy; CARBON FIBER IS THE FUTURE DUDE!).
And the current launch platform that NASA is developing for their new Moon mission, while costing "only" a quarter of what the Saturn rockets cost, is a single-use platform again.
The whole point of the SpaceX is that the different design should allow it to be reusable and drop the cost of space missions by 95% and that is why the company is getting funds for their experiments.
Don't blame the company just because Musk is involved, don't throw the baby out with the, to paraphrase, diaper full of shit that is its most noticeable feature.