Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: The acceptance and success of these flights is taken as evidence of safety. But erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next. The origin and consequences of the erosion and blow-by were not understood. They did not occur equally on all flights and all joints; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Why not sometime, when whatever conditions determined it were right, still more leading to catastrophe?
In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as if they understood it, giving apparently logical arguments to each other often depending on the "success" of previous flights.
“First things first. Get the facts, then decide what to do next. And hope that there is a next.”
Source: The Mortal Word (2018), Chapter 2 (p. 33)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Genevieve Cogman 21
novelist and game designer 1972Related quotes
As quoted in Out of the Blue: Delight Comes Into Our Lives (1996) by Mark Victor Hansen, Barbara Nichols, and Patty Hansen, p. 85
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean [Episode 1]
Context: We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.
“Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.”
Letters and Social Aims, Quotation and Originality
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Kant was the first to take the next decisive step”
Introduction<!-- p. 3 -->
Space—Time—Matter (1952)
Context: In the field of philosophy Kant was the first to take the next decisive step towards the point of view that not only the qualities revealed by the senses, but also space and spatial characteristics have no objective significance in the absolute sense; in other words, that space, too, is only a form of our perception.
“Last place is first place in the very next race.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
“The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.”