[Howlin]

Since this is kind of your "field," if you will, dare I even say that two accidents in over thirty years is a good record?

[TLBSHOW]

Accidents don't just happen Howlin. There is always a cause to the accident. So what was the cause of this? I know you can't do it, you can't bring yourself to give an opinion except to be a thread nanny! LOL

[Lancey Howard]

Since this is kind of your "field," if you will, dare I even say that two accidents in over thirty years is a good record?

It's not good enough. It is too early to tell with the Columbia disaster, but the Challenger disaster was a nightmare of incompetence, negligence and carelessness. Totally avoidable.

[Willie Green]

Since this is kind of your "field," if you will, dare I even say that two accidents in over thirty years is a good record?

Well, I'm just an ordinary engineer, not a rocket scientist.
But yeah, it is pretty amazing that we haven't had more fatal accidents, given the complexity of the machinery. Although I don't have any figures, I believe fatal accidents were much more common among the early aviation pioneers who followed in the footsteps of the Wright Brothers.

We've certainly come a long way since then. The technology is far more complicated than what Orville and Wilbur invented. It really is quite amazing that we can master such complexity as safely as we do.