Sept. 2, 1998 — On a seemingly normal trans-oceanic flight from New York to Geneva, the cockpit crew of Swissair 111 smelled smoke. Over the course of just 21 minutes, an inaccessible onboard fire intensified to cause system failures that were non-recoverable, and ultimately caused the plane to crash into the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board lost their lives. Five years later, Canada's Transportation Safety Board found that engineering defenses of materials selection, cabin design and wiring placement had lacked sufficient testing. Further, administrative defenses such government oversight of standards and cockpit procedures had not prevented fire hazards from appearing in a location thought to pose minimal fire risk. Safety-by-design faces challenges when new subsystems with new functions are added later (in this case a complex inflight entertainment system), and adherence to safety requirements must be entrusted to a far-flung network of people. Today, NASA faces real challenges with respect to gathering and implementing human rating requirements for new space hardware systems built in-house and by commercial vendors. This story just hints at the problems to be faced.