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Reliability of Avionics Systems

The flight of Apollo XIII never reached the Lunar surface precluding the planned
scientific experimentation to be completed as scheduled. To many, this fact classified
the mission as a failure. The tensions around the world that accompanied the return trip
to earth in a crippled spaceship had a tendency to overshadow many of real successes of
the mission. 'In retroapect, we can look back on the Apollo XIII journey and realize that
it highlighted some previously untested theories that there is a one-to-one correlation
between Reliability, Survivability and the Human Machine. Every dollar invested in relia-
bility in this vehicle had paid dividends in terms of human survivability and perhaps the
results shed a new light on the importance of total reliability in the design process.

The persistence of modern technology was demonstrated by the Apollo XIV flight.
After scientists and engineers painstakingly evaluated flight data from the ill-fated
Apollo XIII flight, necessary changes were incorporated and the Lunar exploration program
proceeded as planned. That flight, as so many situations before it, proved the value of
a carefully integrated man-machine system.

The need for man as an integral element in aerospace systems seems likely for the
next decade. His role and the proper integration of man and machine for maximum system
effectiveness will, however, require periodic re-examination of his survivability in the
environment which is not his natural habitat.

Man's total ability to survive is dependent upon a long series of successful events,
many in series, many in parallel, some man-made, some natural. The body itself is perhaps
the most complex natural machine known to modern technology and its ability to function
can be predicted, estimated, monitored, tested, fixed and to a large extent controlled in
its natural environment.

In the rather short history of aerospace technology, which perhaps began with the
first flight of the Kitty Hawk in 1903, world scientists have taken gigantic strides forward
in the development of design innovations that have extended man's ability not only to survive
in known environments but to explore and fUrther his knowledge of the unknowns of the
universe. Even today as we watch the growth of space technology leading to the development
of orbiting laboratories and transportation systems to carry men and supplies to these space
stations, we have unmanned probes searching the mysteries of Mars and other planets.