Safety measures also backfired in the Challenger mission. The managers believed that O-rings had a sufficient safety margin “to enable them to tolerate three times the worst erosion observed up to that time.”78 What’s more, there was a fail-safe in place. Even if the primary O-ring failed, the officials assumed the secondary O-ring would seal and pick up the slack.79 The existence of these safety measures boosted a sense of invincibility and led to catastrophe when both the primary and the secondary O-rings failed during launch. These rocket scientists were like German cabbies in ABS-equipped
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