[pvg]

Then why does NASA consider it unsafe for mission critical code?

You started with the assertion iterative implementations were more intuitive and easier to read so this is a bit of goalpoast-moving. Write an iterative pseudocode DFS or quicksort. How 'intuitive' does that look?

[blackflame7000]

I'm saying that there are so many downsides both obvious and sneaky associated with recursion that it makes almost no sense to use when the iterative approach is usually safer, doesn't have the headache of unbounded stack calls, and can be more easily parallelized with things like OpenMP

[pvg]

That's what you are saying now, this is what you were saying before:

" I'm willing to bet most people if shown 10 recursive and 10 iterative solutions to the same problems would admit the iterative approach is more intuitive. "

Now you are at NASA sending probes to asteroid Weasel 39812.