NASA's Understanding of Risk in Apollo and Shuttle

摘要

Mathematical risk analysis was used in Apollo, but it gave unacceptably pessimistic results and was discontinued. Shuttle was designed without using risk analysis, under the assumption that good engineering would make it very safe. This approach led to an unnecessarily risky design, which directly led to the Shuttle tragedies. Although the Challenger disaster was directly due to a mistaken launch decision, it might have been avoided by a safer design. The ultimate cause of the Shuttle tragedies was the Apollo era decision to abandon risk analysis.