Future role of ESA R&M assurance in space flight exploration

Future ESA (European Space Agency) planning with regard to R&M (reliability and maintainability) assurance is examined. The author believes that one should move steadily and rigorously ahead in the assurance sciences, ensuring that one always understands the failure mechanism level, and that one should proceed in traceable and risk-defined increments to total system and technology peripheries. It is suggested that stricter control of customer and contractor roles, executive recognition of contractor maturity (and the converse), and majority payment in orbit would accelerate the achievement of R&M improvements and expand the utilization of the space frontier