The element of chance?

[Malachai]

I've noticed that seemingly well built rockets having the occasional structural failure. And in my mind, I think "well, seals fail, o-rings crack, et cetera." I've also noticed that these failures generally happen at night, which makes sense, since things can get cold at night. So the question is, am I correct, does..."stuff" just happen on occasion, or am I justifying engineering issues of my own causing?

[itsme86]

My guess is that it has to do with differences in when/how you're applying different forces (banking, rotating, etc.) and not so much random chance. Although, that would be an interesting element in the game.

[UmbralRaptor]

Random failures are (at least for the time being) a bug, not a feature. I imagine that the risk of controlled flight into ground is higher at night, though.

[Vanamonde]

The thing you make in the VAB is a template, and then the game makes an actual working copy when you go to launch. As strange as it may seem, there are minor variations in this, so the same design does not always perform exactly the same way from one launch to the next. However, it's a much less severe problem than it was a few versions ago.