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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.

important in the launch-area risk calculations provided an appropriate value of A is
selected.
Since a good data match within ±40° of the flight line was not found, the effect of this
on ship-hit calculations was investigated. It was discovered that the values chosen for
A and B made no significant difference, since the risks to shipping near the flight line
are totally dominated by the Mode-4 failure response (see Section-6.2.3).
Mode-5 baseline risks for Atlas and Delta were recomputed using newly derived
values for (1) shaping constants A and B, (2) the overall vehicle failure probability, and
(3) the relative probabilities of occurrence of the individual failure-response modes.
Results were then compared with baseline risks computed in prior RTI studies. For
Atlas, Mode-5 launch-area risks were reduced by a factor between 3 to- 11, the exact
value depending on the assumed breakup qa. for the vehicle. For Delta, the reduction
factor was between 4 and 75, with the exact value again· depending on assumed
breakup conditions.
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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.