We build tools to extend our reach.

In spaceflight, that has always been true. From slide rules to simulation, from analog gauges to digital telemetry, each generation of technology has promised better insight and greater control. Today, that promise includes automation and artificial intelligence that would have been difficult to imagine even a decade ago.

These tools are powerful. They are also indifferent.

Challenger did not fail because of a lack of information. It failed in a context where data existed, but judgment was compromised. The presence of more sophisticated tools does not resolve that tension. In some cases, it sharpens it.

Automation can reduce workload. AI can surface patterns that humans might miss. Neither can assume responsibility. They do not experience doubt. They do not feel the weight of consequence. They do not hesitate when hesitation is warranted.

The risk is not that machines will make decisions for us. The risk is that we will allow their confidence to substitute for our own judgment. That we will treat outputs as conclusions rather than inputs. That we will forget that models, no matter how advanced, are expressions of assumptions made by people under constraints.

Challenger’s lesson applies here with uncomfortable precision. The most dangerous failures occur not when systems are opaque, but when they appear authoritative. When they reinforce the desire to proceed rather than challenge it.

Responsibility does not scale automatically with capability.

It must be carried, consciously, by those who design, interpret, and act on what tools provide.

Forty years on, the question is not whether we should use these technologies. We should. The question is whether we will remain willing to interrupt them. To question them. To override them when experience and judgment disagree.

The tools will not remember Challenger. That obligation remains ours.