OK, flipside to my last question, what are the Epic Safety Wins, situations where things should have gone horrendously wrong, but robust systems somehow held it together?
(Inspired by this post about an engineer accidentally flying a military jet, and landing it. ) https://mastodon.me.uk/@DreadShips/112968013969592486
There were a few US space examples: Apollo 13, Armstrong's Gemini (where straightforwardly using a backup system without any special cleverness saved the day), Apollo 11 landing (where knowing the ways failures should manifest allowed it to continue), Apollo 8(?) launch (where if not for engine limits, the second stage would have pogoed itself to destruction).
In aviation pretty much every single powerless landing satisfies the criteria.
There are surely many rail examples in the UK, where detonating caps (which were a UK invention) or the like saved the day. There's the amusing case of the train collision next to Żywiec in 2005, where a train derailment into a river was avoided by deliberately colliding two passenger trains (with no injuries) -- one can argue that having robust communications saved that day.
