Simplest explanation comes from Tory Bruno: they design with a factor of safety just above 1. 1.1 to 1.25. This is one of the reasons they wait for good weather to launch… they are trying to maximize payload. Also until recently, it’s been sort of a vicious cycle: rocket is very exquisite and expensive, so spacecraft needs to last longer and thus gets more exquisite and expensive, etc.
Have you seen how many issues race cars have? Same shit. It goes on and on.
I believe the safety factors in Falcon 9 are 1.4. NASA credited SpaceX with using safety factors larger than normal for aerospace.
Surely reusability requires higher margins than ever needed before.
It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether. And stop calling me Shirley.
One might make the same observations about software “bugginess” and complexity. The pace of improvement is such that everyone is riding the bleeding edge and, as such, the carpet inevitably gets a few spots of blood on it.
Software quality sucks because the consequences for getting it wrong are low for the people and organizations making it.
Which is often fine, but sometimes isn't.
I have come to think that the reason why people are prepared to accept AI slop is because the software industry was so blase about quality. They already had slop, now they get it cheaper.
AI is the fentanyl to JavaScript bootcamp heroin.
You're giving the system too much credit. The users and the SWEs don't get a choice in this, they eat whatever the thought leaders and PMs spec out. They are the ones who make the decisions, you can either get on board or look for a new job.
There isn't an actual diverse ecosystem of most consumer software, just a monoculture of largely undifferentiated clones.