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DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE Wednesday 27 February, Blackett Room, 5.30 for 6.00pm Joseph Fragola SAIC, New York, Visiting Professor, University of Strathclyde Space Shuttle Probabilistic Risk Assessment Following the Challenger accident, and at the urging of the Presidential Commission established in its aftermath, NASA reluctantly undertook pioneering efforts in the application of PRA to the space shuttle system. These efforts led eventually to the first comprehensive launch-to-landing integrated risk assessment of the space shuttle system. This year-long effort completed in 1995 and endorsed by NASA before the US Congress represented a development resulting from seven years of application of risk technology to the space shuttle. The study still remains the standard analysis of risk of the space shuttle. The approach, which continues to maintain a great deal of similarity to business decision making approaches applied to such problems as portfolio assessment, quantitatively assesses the potential progression of postulated initiating events as intercepted and diverted by protective and mitigative features of the shuttle system design. This lecture will address the scenario basis of the approach, how it was applied to the shuttle system, and the results obtained to the then current shuttle system design. In addition the lecture will address the methods used to quantify the scenarios and to address the associated uncertainties in the underlying data sets. Finally an explanation will be provided of the role that the shuttle PRA has played in the upgrading and risk reduction of the current shuttle will be provided along with its implications on the design of future space launch systems.