In Richard Feynman’s appendix to the Roger’s Commission report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, one of the issues he describes is a lack of understanding of the term “safety factor” by NASA managers: This is a strange use of the engineer’s term, “safety factor.” If a bridge is built to withstand a certain load without the beams permanently deforming, cracking, or breaking, it may be designed for the materials used to actually stand up under three times the load.
