Originally Posted by
esa-aardvark
The reality is the aircraft flew for nearly two years
How long did the Space Shuttle fly before the first disaster ?
The 737 Max fleet flew for a bit under 400,000 flight hours before the first accident, and the second occurred with the fleet at just under 800,000 hours. The demonstrated catastrophic accident rate at that point was about 1/400,000 per flight hour, or about 3x10E-6. This is roughly 100 times worse than the overall average transport airplane rate of catastrophic accidents due to all causes in the developed nations of Europe, North America, and Asia. This is about what you'd expect with non-fail-safe system design in just one truly critical system with dependence on typical electro-mechanical devices.
The rate of AOA sensor failure on the max was not unusual. If you monitor AOA sensor failures across a broader fleet, their average failure rate is consistent with the max experience. They occur for various reasons, and bird strikes are not the most common reason, but the average rate of failure is comparable. I've seen several reports on the NG over the past year for example.
The space shuttle's operating environment was very different and its mission was inherently high risk. Its average rate of a catastrophic event during launch and re-entry was about 1/100 per flight hour even with excellent systems designs due to the need for minimum weight and the operating conditions of orbital speeds and transition from and to flight in the atmosphere. Its relevance to the max issues is limited other than to show what first-class critical flight control systems design looks like.