The reliability impact of mission abort strategies on redundant flight computer systems
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.