UN General Assembly
1986

In lands as politically remote from each other as the United States and the Soviet Union, two separate incidents involving imperfect technology and human miscalculation have caused major disasters that have.had an impact upon and traumatized people far beyond the borders of those two powerful States. The tragic explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and the equally tragic accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant point to mankind's scientific imperfections and the very thin margin of error between scientific progress and disaster. In a related sense those two accidents also bring to mind the thin margin of error between the policy of nuclear deterrence and the potential accidental nuclear annihilation of the entire human race. They remind us that unless we work together no amount of technology can save our species from its own inventions.