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> Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.

I’m not sure the early Apollo astronauts would agree.

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The phrase associated with Apollo was, "waste anything but time." Achieving arbitrarily high levels of quality takes time, for pretty much any process. Those F1 engines were mostly handmade, which you can see among other places in the imperfect machining of this F1 injector plate[0]. The attitude at NASA towards risk was not "avoid it at all costs": what they were doing was inherently risky. NASA's goal is to manage risk.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230522164734im_/https://cdn.ge...

If you need a spacecraft better than the requirements state than the requirements are shit and need to be redone. For example every human rated spacecraft after Apollo 1 should have a door which opens outwards, an interior atmosphere composed of mostly nitrogen and some oxygen, be comprised of flame retardant materials and have adequate fire suppression systems.

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