[Adam Y.]

and same thing was running through everyones minds when airplanes came out, then jets too. competition makes things go quality too. if some company loses some ship, their reputation will definitly go down. might even lose their business. so these companys will make things QUALITY. i think. even NASA screws up sometimes. (columbia, few apollos, etcetc.)

Not at all. Successful companies are in the business of making money. Injuring (or killing) their customers is something they tend to avoid.

Too bad the first commercial jet planes fell out of the sky due to a design error. Ever wonder why airplanes have circular windows. Well their design is traced back to the first jet liner. They were having mysterious crashes that actually grounded the plane. Aparently the planes had a fatal flaw that was discovered after extensive ground testing. The planes were failing at the point at the windows which in that plane was rectangular (which were that shape for purely asthetic reasons). After that all airplane compaines united to design a very safe jetliner. Then you have cars which did not even follow the same lines of contraversy in terms of safety. Everyone at first thought cars were safe even though they had no seatbelts or any form of protection. Of course that all changed during the 1970's?? when Ralph Nader came along. I believe he came along and said that a lot of the cars were unsafe. Im not sure of which specific brand car that he went after but the contraversy delt with the camber of the wheels which may have caused roll overs and the fact that the engine was in the front (which resulted in horrible steering). Of course some of the things Nader said were a little exaggerated but it did help start the first government crash tests. A lot of vehicles that were built were scary in terms of safety. There was one car that had two of it's safety features removed (first airbags and a bladder around gas tank) which resulted into it turning into a fire ball every time you hit the car inthe back. I could go on about how companies thought they are doing a good job at safety but weren't. NASA has a fairl good track record in terms of safety except for the fact that they keep on failing into a group think mentaility. There was two apollo missions and two shuttle missions in which the disaster could have been prevented.