The Reliability Impact of Mission Abort Strategies on Redundant Flight Computer Systems

Abstract

This correspondence presents a reliability model for a redundant flight computer system with. standby sparing, taking into account various mission abort strategies. A mission rule to initiate a mission abort after a predetermined number of detected computer failures and to return to earth with the remaining computers is shown to result in: 1) little improvement of crew safety unless computer error coverage is nearly perfect, and 2) significant degradation in mission success whenever coverage is high.