Any design, whether its for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

Our expectations for a technology rise with its advancement.

There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic was designed, the emphasis was placed on surviving a head-on collision.

Design is nothing if not decision making.

No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.

Form follows failure.

Whether or not science can be applied to that mental construct [i.e. the designed entity] is a matter of availability. If there is body of scientific knowledge that can be applied, then it would be foolish not to exploit it. However, if there is none, it does not mean that the thing cannot be designed, made, and used safely.