's New Shepard rocket, the Titan submersible didn't require independent certification to ferry paying customers into the ocean's depths. Then there were the somewhat dismissive claims regarding safety certifications made by Stockton Rush, the billionaire CEO of OceanGate, the company that built and operated Titan,in the wake of the disaster.
"Standards in aviation and space have evolved from prescriptive requirements, which were telling you exactly how to build a system to something that expects you to demonstrate that you have performed your hazard analysis and addressed the main safety problems," Sgobba said."In fact, if you want to fly a coffee machine to the International Space Station, you will have to comply with the same set of standards as if you were building a whole new module.
Tommaso Sgobba is the executive director and board secretary of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety and former head of spaceflight safety at the European Space Agency . Now formally retired, Sgobba joined ESA in 1989 and worked as a product assurance and safety manager for all European crewed missions on the space shuttle, MIR station, and for the European research facilities for the International Space Station.