"Terrell Miller" wrote in message
...
snip really neat summary

How long did it take you to type that...?

Regarding point R: Sometimes the causes have been seen before, but in the
disaster they've come in a new and lethal combination with other factors. In
my understanding causes are hardly ever single-point failures, but multiple
failures or chains of events that come together in a bad way. Note also that
in both Shuttle disasters, the root causes were known and dismissed as
insignificant and/or buried long before they got lethal.

I think point S could also be fleshed out a little... Whenever something
goes wrong there are always two or three "I Told You So's" who come out of
the woodwork and take advantage of the situation to get some TV time. They
don't always have "documented proof", but they do always have an axe to
grind. One example is the fellow who got time on one of the networks to harp
on how he was supposedly fired after he tried to convince "them" to put
XB-70-style ejection capsules in the Shuttle.

There's also the negative doom-sayer types, usually from think-tanks, who
make the rounds and say the equivalent of "Yeah well, the program totally
sucks in reality and (disaster) is really no surprise, because everything
(agency or group) has ever done is really a failure. No success is possible
in the future either." John Pike from globalsecurity comes to mind... That
guy is on TV everywhere and I have yet to hear him say anything positive
about anything. I think these are the people called "Beltway Bandits" but I
might be wrong.