Department of War·Document
Department of the Air Force Report, 1996
A 1996 Air Force analysis digs into how unlikely-but-catastrophic space booster failures get factored into risk calculations — and argues that standard models weren't capturing them well enough. The document surveys historical launch failure modes and proposes novel modeling approaches to close those gaps, which matters for understanding how the military assessed risk around space launch operations during a period of significant expansion in that domain.
This report describes the Modeling of Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, documenting historical launch failure modes and recommending corrective actions to address them using novel modelling techniques.