Astro Teller Quotes

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

Companies selling a product play down its vulnerability and emphasize its robustness. But only after technology leaves the dock is it really tested. For human operators in control of a supposedly infallible system, complacency and overconfidence can take over, and caution may be thrown to the wind.

We call the fates of the Titanic and the Concordia - as well as those of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia - 'accidents.' Foreseeing such undesirable events is what engineers are expected to do. However, design trade-offs leave technological systems open to failings once predicted, but later forgotten.

any system, in which the final decisions are referred to human beings, and in which the source of all authority are human, is doomed to failure because it deifies human beings by designating others than God as lords over men.

The problem with people is that they're only human.

The machinery of destruction is complete, poised on a hair trigger, waiting for the 'button' to be 'pushed' by some misguided or deranged human being or for some faulty computer chip to send out the instruction to fire. That so much should be balanced on so fine a point--that the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment--is a fact against which belief rebels.

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.

Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.

It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.

Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

The answer lies in preventing these failures, not in looking for better ways to fix the people who are failing.

It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

Nothing is more dangerous in practice, than an obstinate, unbending adherence to a system, particularly in its application to the wants and errors of mankind.

Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be attributed to ignorance.

The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

There will be a "Oops 100." They'll be plenty more oopses. I'm not perfect. I'm human.

Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.

Compared with the awesome might and eternal power of the ocean, no human being can fail to be reminded of their own insignificance.

To err is human, but to forgive, well that's right on.

The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.

Unfortunately, the more complex the system, the greater the room for error.

Humans are the worst control system to put in front of a car.