I had an aerodynamics / rocket science professor in grad school who used to say 'planes are as reliable as toasters', and the reason for that is the literal 40

I had an aerodynamics / rocket science professor in grad school who used to say 'planes are as reliable as toasters', and the reason for that is the literal 40 million flights per year. Planes can explode just as easily as rockets can. The reason planes have a much less risky failure mode is because we've flown them for billions of hours, not because we've added a ton of redundancies to them. In fact many of the structural 'factors of safety' in airplanes are only 1.5, as opposed to a FOS of 8 in your car. So again, it's not about just tacking on redundant systems, it's about getting the experience required to understand all the failure modes. The only times planes crash these days is when we encounter a new failure mode. Rocketry will get there as well.