There are definitely some parallels, but it is not the same in many regards. For example the N1 was severely hampered by engine availability - Glushko wanted to push his hypergolic rockets and engines and refused to build an engine like he did for the R7. So they had to pick something else & ended up with far too many (for that time) not very reliable NK-15 engines.
Also compared to Super Heavy & Starship, they had more stages (4 vs 2) and most importantly, were not able to test the stages separately - which was possible for the Saturn V & IIRC all its stages exploded on the test stand at least once.
Both Super Heavy and Starship can be tested separately & Starship exploded during such testing, without taking the rest of the rocket with it, like N1 regularly did - including demolishing the super expensive launch pad during at least one occasion.
We did accidentally torch the Apollo 1 crew in their capsule.
My fav Apollo-era fuckup is when they tested the launch abort system. The test went bad, but was 100% successful in demonstrating it worked. Heh. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DpdKxv9WINY
Over on the nuclear side there was SL1, which AFAICT is probably the answer to the question "why doesn't the US Army have its own nuclear systems?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOt7xDKxmCM .
"Explode until you figure it out" served Falcon 9 well.
I'm inclined to see Constellation/SLS/Orion/etc. as at least as wasteful as the explosions, at least so far. Which one wins out will depend on the end results.
While "explode until you figure it out" worked well on the Falcon 9, it was a lot of taxpayer money to develop a rocket system primarily used to launch their own product at this point - not delivering on price-points they claimed
I might be a little bitter that NASA doesn't get that money instead.
Sure, even with Falcon 9 many found it iffy to have so many engines - but it turned out fine. Hopefully modern control hardware and QA can handle also 30+. :)
Also compared to Super Heavy & Starship, they had more stages (4 vs 2) and most importantly, were not able to test the stages separately - which was possible for the Saturn V & IIRC all its stages exploded on the test stand at least once.
Both Super Heavy and Starship can be tested separately & Starship exploded during such testing, without taking the rest of the rocket with it, like N1 regularly did - including demolishing the super expensive launch pad during at least one occasion.