The airship looked magnificent for only a few seconds more. I raised my camera expecting to photograph one of the great technological triumphs of the modern world, when suddenly flames erupted across the skin of the Hindenburg like a nightmare unfolding in slow motion. People began running in every direction while the enormous structure collapsed from the sky in burning fragments. Yet the strangest part of the scene was another version of myself running toward me through the chaos, frozen between terror and disbelief. As an aerospace engineer, I could not stop thinking about how quickly human ambition can transform into catastrophe. Progress, I understood that day, always travels dangerously close to disaster.
