bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison) (07/06/89)
I highly recommend reading the June 89 IEEE Spectrum article "The space shuttle: a case of subjective engineering" (I highly recommend reading IEEE Spectrum in general). The last section is titled "Hidden risks to the space station", and notes that "'...the probability of losing an Orbiter before [the space station's first phase] is complete is about 60 percent.'" It then goes on to comment that the current budget battles between Congress and NASA have left no funds for backup parts to the space station, estimated to increase the cost of the space station by ten percent. There is some concern that, even if a space station is funded, it may never "fly", since a failure in the launch system could doom the station itself, by destroying irreplacable components. The latest estimates place "loss of a shuttle from launch through payload deployment at 1 in 78...". The article also indicates that NASA's lack of interest in estimates of probability of failure goes back to the Apollo mission when the probability for success was estimated to be only five percent. Bob Allison uunet!microsoft!bobal