[nurbl]

What makes you say it "could have gone right"? From what came out about the o-rings behavior at cold temperatures, it seems they were taking a pretty big risk. Your perspective seems to be that it's always a coin toss no matter what, and I don't think that is true. Were there engineers speaking up in this way at every successful launch too?

[LorenPechtel]

Actually, had it been winder that day it might have gone right.

There were 8 joints. Only one failed, and only in one place. The spot being supercooled by boiloff from the LOX tank. And the leak self-sealed (there's aluminum in the fuel--hot exhaust touching cold metal deposited some of it) when it happened--but the seal wasn't robust enough and eventually shook itself apart.

[JoshuaRogers]

I think what they were saying, especially given the phrasing “How many projects luckily succeeded after a reckless decision?” is that, if things hadn’t failed we would never have known and thus how many other failures of procedure/ ethics have we just not seen because the worst case failed to occur.

[wormius]

Good ol' survivorship bias...