And yet commercial airplanes, which have used this methodology for decades, are one of the most reliable mechanical systems humans have ever made. The mean-time

And yet commercial airplanes, which have used this methodology for decades, are one of the most reliable mechanical systems humans have ever made. The mean-time-before-failure (MTBF) for component failures that impacted a 787 flight is ~40,000 hours [1] or about 4.5 flight-years per component failure, not full system failure, component failure. After nearly ~4,000,000 flight-hours there has not been a single full system failure or fatality yet in a 787 and this is only a fraction of the standard in aerospace so far. Between 2000 and 2010 there was ~1 death per 50 billion passenger-miles [2]. At an average speed of ~700 mph that would be 1 death per ~71 million passenger-hours or ~8150 passenger-years or ~125 airframe-years. People who want to design reliable systems and processes look to airplanes for how to do that. That does not mean the same techniques are applicable or cost-effective in a different context, but at the very least the historical processes have been empirically demonstrated to produce extremely high reliability far beyond what nearly every other industry can attain and what many industries, such as commercial software, do not even attempt to achieve and may not even think is possible in their environment. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1000936120300546 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S100093612... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...