Joe Sutter aka "father of the 747" gave a talk at the UW School of Aeronautics and Astronautics after the Challenger disaster in 1986. [0] He was on the Rogers

Joe Sutter aka "father of the 747" gave a talk at the UW School of Aeronautics and Astronautics after the Challenger disaster in 1986. [0] He was on the Rogers Commission with Feynman and others that investigated the root causes. The thing that still sticks in my head was his description of the shuttle as an experimental vehicle, which he described as having 700 "critical" components. Critical in this case means that if that component fails you lose the vehicle. He stated that by contrast the 747 had zero critical parts. It's still the best engineering talks I've ever heard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter