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.