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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.
“Mission Control”17 pages
Table 13. Percentage Weighting for Sample of 1186 Launches ter Last Last 100 Last200 Last 300 I i:st 500 Point Ra Point Points Pointsnstant Points Points Last:Fir 0.999 0.14 13.7 26.1 37.3 56.7 3.3 0.996 0.40 33.3 55.6 70.6 87.3 1.2 X 1()2 0.995 0.50 39.5 63.5 78.0 92.1 3.8x 1()2 0.994 0.60 45.3 70.0 83.6 95.1 1.3x Hf 0.993 0.70 50.5 75.5 87.9 97.0 4.2 X l(f 0.992 0.80 55.2 79.9 91.0 98.2 1.4 X 104 0.991 0.90 59.5 83.6 93.4 98.9 4.5 X 104 0.990 1.00 63.4 86.6 95.1 99.3 1.5x Hf 0.980 2.00 86.7 · 98.2 99.8 99.996 3.9 X 1011 The value of F = 0.999 is considered inappropriate because, as seen in Table 13, the weighting factor applied to the most recent datum is only 3.3 times that applied to the oldest test result from 39 years ago. The most recent 200 and 300 points in the sample comprising 16.8% and 25.2% of the data receive only 26.1% and 37.3% of the total weight. This is not too different from equal weighting of data, which is appropriate only if the relative frequency of occurrence of each response mode has not changed significantly through the years. On the other hand, use of F = 0.99 effectively throws out the oldest 600 to 700 launches that are sorely needed for an adequate sample size. The results of the filtering process are given in Table 14 for failures during flight phases 0 - 2. Table 14. Response-Mode Occurrence Percentages Filter Respcnse Mode Factor 0.999 1 7.39 2 2.27 3 1.70 4 73.30 5 15.34 0.996 2.24 4.35 0.37 80.37 12.67 0.995 1.32 4.92 0.19 82.59 10.98 0.994 0.993 0.992 0.991 0.73 0.39 0.20 0.11 5.26 5.37 5.31 5.13 0.09 0.04 0.02 0.01 84.57 86.25 87.68 88.92 9.35 7.95 6.78 5.84 0.990 0.05 4.87 0.00 90.02 5.06 0.980 0.00 1.86 0.00 96.81 1.33 The results in Table 14 show that the percentages of occurrence for response-modes 2 and 4 are relatively insensitive to filter-factor values, while the percentages for Modes 1, 3, and 5 decrease as filter memory (filter factor) decreases. This suggests that occurrences of Modes 1, 3, and 5 have been decreasing over the years, while Modes 2 and 4 occurrences have not changed much. Although it cannot be argued convincingly 9/10/96 27 RTI
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Report, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 181 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.