Safety Design for Space Systems

Preface

Bryan O'Connor

Associate Administrator, Safety and Mission Assurance, Headquarters, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC

In his book, To Engineer Is Human, Henry Petrosky said, “No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.” In this elegant statement, he poses both the challenge and the opportunity for the spaceflight system safety engineer. Just how does the engineer facilitate the incorporation of lessons learned from historical failures and close calls into the design of the next spaceflight system?

This book is a compilation of much of the best thinking of the spaceflight safety community. It includes discussion of philosophies, techniques, methods, ...