Improved verification for aerospace systems

Aerospace systems are subject to many stringent performance requirements that must be verified with low residual risk to the customer. This report investigates the improvements in verification planning and requirements validation made possible by using conditional approaches vice classical statistical procedures. The example used in this report to illustrate the results of these investigations is a proposed mission assurance requirement with its concomitant maximum acceptable verification risk for the NASA Constellation Program Orion Launch Abort System (LAS). This report demonstrates the following improvements possible through use of conditional approaches: 1) verification plans are more achievable and feasible than those developed using classical statistical methods; 2) historical surrogate data can be used to validate proposed performance requirements; and, 3) historical surrogate data may be incorporated in verification planning to produce even less costly and more reasonable verification plans. The procedures presented in this report may produce similar improvements and cost savings in validation and verification for any performance requirement for any aerospace system.