The Columbia Disaster: Saturday, February 1, 2003
LLOYD J. DUMAS, ljdumas@utdallas.edu,
http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/socsci/dumas.htm
Dumas is the author of "Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous
Technologies" and is a professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said today (Saturday): "The tragic breakup of the space shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the atmosphere this morning once more underlines the vulnerability of highly complex technologies. It is too early to know what caused the shuttle to disintegrate - human error, technical failure, or something else. But the lesson is clear: when fallible human beings interact with powerful technologies, failures are inevitable. This time, the failure took the lives of seven astronauts. The next catastrophic human-technical failure could take the lives of thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people, if the technology involved is a nuclear power plant, a highly toxic chemicals facility, or a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon of mass destruction. For the same reasons, the space-based weapons the government is so determined to deploy will be no less vulnerable to malfunction, with potentially disastrous consequences. The Columbia tragedy is the latest in a series of warnings we have been given that we must now find ways to eliminate the most dangerous of our technologies if we are to permanently avoid catastrophe."
LLOYD J. DUMAS, ljdumas@utdallas.edu,
http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/socsci/dumas.htm
Dumas is the author of "Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous
Technologies" and is a professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said today (Saturday): "The tragic breakup of the space shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the atmosphere this morning once more underlines the vulnerability of highly complex technologies. It is too early to know what caused the shuttle to disintegrate - human error, technical failure, or something else. But the lesson is clear: when fallible human beings interact with powerful technologies, failures are inevitable. This time, the failure took the lives of seven astronauts. The next catastrophic human-technical failure could take the lives of thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people, if the technology involved is a nuclear power plant, a highly toxic chemicals facility, or a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon of mass destruction. For the same reasons, the space-based weapons the government is so determined to deploy will be no less vulnerable to malfunction, with potentially disastrous consequences. The Columbia tragedy is the latest in a series of warnings we have been given that we must now find ways to eliminate the most dangerous of our technologies if we are to permanently avoid catastrophe."