O-ring failures against temperature for shuttle launches

Description

This dataset records the occurence of failures in the O-rings of space shuttles against the temperature at the time of the launches. One (1) stands for a failure and zero for a success.

Usage

data(challenger)

Format

A data frame with 23 observations on the following 2 variables.

oring

Occurence or not of an O-ring failure

temp

Temperature at the time of the launch

Details

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded during take off, killing the seven astronauts aboard. The explosion was the result of an O-ring failure, a splitting of a ring of rubber that seals the parts of the ship together. The accident was believed to be caused by the unusually cold weather (31 degrees F or 0 degrees C) at the time of launch, as there is reason to believe that the O-ring failure probabilities increase as temperature decreases.

Source

Dalal, S.R., Fowlkes, E.B. and Hoadley, B. (1989) Risk analysis of the space shuttle: pre-Challenger prediction of failure. J. American Statistical Association, 84, 945–957.

See Chapters 6 and 7 of EnteR Monte Carlo Statistical Methods by Christian P. Robert and George Casella

Examples

data(challenger)
plot(challenger$temp,challenger$oring)

Results