[SystemSafety] Feynman and the Challenger disaster

Gergely Buday gbuday at gmail.com
Mon Jun 15 22:12:35 CEST 2015


Hi,

I came across this today:

"A fascinating 1986 text by Richard Feynman on the question of how to
estimate the reliability of a space shuttle. This text was written as
part of an investigation of the Challenger launch disaster. It
describes a large mismatch between the reliability estimates made by
the engineers (of the order of 1 failure in 100 uses) and the
reliability estimates communicated to the public by the NASA
management (of the order of 1 failure in 100 000 uses). I think this
text should be of interest to anyone interested in security,
engineering, the production of safety-critical products and its
management."

https://plus.google.com/115261498097261634859/posts/RhApPYEDhvk

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt

- Gergely


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