Stopping launch vehicle failures using telemetry to measure equipment usable life

Launch vehicle reliability is driven by infant mortality failures, which can be eliminated using a prognostic analysis prior, during and/or after the exhaustive and comprehensive dynamic environmental factory testing, which conducted to increase equipment reliability. To move to the 100% “measured” reliability domain, launch vehicle dynamic environmental factory testing should be followed by a prognostic analysis to measure the usable life of all the equipment and identify the equipment that will fail when used. Current reliability uses a calculated value based on the stochastic equations identified in reliability standards such as MIL HDBK 217. “Measured” reliability means that the equipment usable life has been measured invasively using equipment analog telemetry and proprietary predictive algorithms as part of a prognostic and health management (PHM) program as well as calculated on paper. Equipment with a “measured” 100% reliability means that the equipment does not have any parts with accelerated aging and will function normally for at least one year with certainty. During typical equipment ATP when reliability engineers calculates reliability on paper, only equipment functional performance is measured and confirmed throughout the ATP and equipment performance is unrelated to either short-term or long term equipment reliability making testing alone inadequate to identify the equipment that will fail prematurely during launch. A prognostic analysis measures equipment usable life/reliability invasively, sharing test data used to measure and confirm equipment performance and provides a remaining usable life in days/months for equipment that will fail during launch for replacement allowing the production of launch vehicles that will not fail prematurely.