[ethbro]

This.

Engineering is what hopefully guides reality up the correct branch of a theoretically possible tree.

You can simulate most of each one of those branches. But what are you going to do with a million simulation results? How does that guide your course of action? What do you do differently?

If this was an engineering or assembly defect, the answer is always going to be "Don't do that next time." If it was a design defect, then the part wasn't simulated (unlikely) or our understanding of how it operated in this design was incomplete (more likely).

The trick with rocket science is that the design tolerances are by necessity very tight. Physics dictates this with chemical propulsion. Every part you over-engineer in a weight-increasing way decreases the weight available for payload. And there isn't very much weight there to start with...