Bayesian Reliability Analysis with Slice Sampling in Launch Vehicle Applications

Abstract

Mission reliability for launch vehicles is the probability of successfully placing a payload into its delivery orbit within the required accuracy constraints accounting for design and process reliability. Launch vehicle design reliability provides an estimate of reliability by accounting for potential failure modes that originate within the system hardware and software while process reliability includes consideration of failure modes introduced by manufacturing, infrastructure, assembly, ground processing, and system integration activities. In order to account for the failure modes described above, the design reliability predictions are updated with historical flight successes and failures from similar launch vehicles to get the overall mission reliability.