Documents / Report

Department of the Air Force Report, 1996

U.S. Department of War · 1996-09-10 · 181 pages · text from the file's own layer

This final report, dated September 10, 1996, was prepared by the Research Triangle Institute for the Department of the Air Force's 45th and 30th Space Wing safety offices. Titled Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, it shows how rare Mode-5 failures, in which a rocket veers well off its intended flight line, are modeled in the DAMP risk-analysis program. An appendix lists Atlas, Delta, Titan and Thor launch and failure histories through August 1996.

From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: 9/10/96, N/A. This report describes the Modeling of Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, documenting historical launch failure modes and recommending corrective actions to address them using novel modelling techniques.

  • p. 88 …Vehicle loses control at or shortly after liftoff, with all flight directions equally likely. Destruct is…
  • p. 106 …121 (8) Missiles/Space Vehicle Files, 45th Space Wing, Wing Safety, Mission Flight Control and Analysis…
  • p. 111 …Such behavior did not necessarily prevent the attainment of some, or even all, mission objectives. 50…
  • p. 131 …Due to excess speed, spacecraft passed 22,000 miles in front of moon, and primary mission…
  • p. 132 …Although Atlas performance was satisfactory, the mission was apparently a failure. No other data available. 134…
  • p. 133 …A flight-control malfunction occurred at about 15 seconds at the start of the pitch program…
  • p. 137 …Vehicle became unstable when B2 pitch control was lost at 121 seconds. Loss of pitch control…
  • p. 138 …The missile then lost attitude control, executing a hard yaw rate tum throughout and beyond the…
  • p. 139 …of the rate gyro or an electrical failure in the pitch channel of the flight control…
  • p. 140 caused yaw and roll rates that the flight control system could not correct. As a result…
  • p. 151 …Attitude control lost during second stage coast period. Third stage spun up, but did not fire…
  • p. 153 …One solid-rocket motor carried to MECO, but mission was still a complete success. 102. SMS…
  • p. 169 …Missile tumbled out of control at 130 seconds, then broke up. 104. IHA (65-210), 1…
  • p. 170 …Nominal mission through transtage second burn shutdown. Attitude control system engine failed to shutdown following vernier…
  • p. 171 …However, satellite propulsion system malfunctioned putting satellite in uncontrollable position with no possibility of restoring mission…
  • p. 172 …control until propellant depletion. Trajectory inaccuracies were compensated for during Stage-2 burn, and the mission…
  • p. 180 …Missiles/Space Vehicle Files, 45th Space Wing, Wing Safety, Mission Flight Control and Analysis (SEO), 1957…
The entire Titan history through 1995 is depicted rather compactly in bar-graph form in
Figure 39. The solid-block portion of each bar indicates the number of launches during
the calendar year for which vehicle performance was entirely normal, in-so far as could
be determined. The clear white parts forming the tops of most bars show the number
of launches that were either failures or flights where the launch vehicle experienced
some sort of anomalous behavior. Every launch with an- entry _in the response mode
column in Table 45 falls in this category. Such behavior did not necessarily prevent the
attainment of some, or even all, mission objectives.
9/10/96
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55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Launch Year
Figure 39. Titan Launch Summary
148 RTI

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Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 181 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.