2.3. Issues Regarding the Reliability of Docking Devices The issues of reliability have an extremely important, often decisive value in the planning and use of space equipment. The reliability of docking devices, including control, is its ability to execute the assigned functions in a given time in the conditions of use, that is, in flight in space according to a planned program after the cycle of Earth-based work is completed and the craft is injected into orbit. The reliability of the docking device is characterized by fail-safety. High reliability is the absence of failures or the small probability of not fulfilling three basic functions. The reasons for unreliable operation of the docking device overall may be: 1) failures of individual elements or incorrect interaction among them or with other systems; 2) lack of correspondence between the docking device and the given use conditions or deviation of these conditions from the expected conditions; 3) use errors. The first two groups of reasons may be due to an organic imperfection in the construction and design or individual defects in manufacturing, usually of a random nature. The technology of manufacturing should exclude or minimize production defects. And if a defect, explicit or hidden, is revealed, then the volume and method of testing should guarantee its detection. Thus, reliability depends on the entire body of work done to create the docking device, the preparation for flight, and its execution: the selection of the design, construction, and its characteristics, the technology of production and monitoring, the quality of manufacturing, the correct definition, consideration, and endurance of working conditions, full testing, which permits detection of organic defects and the failure to meet the given conditions, correctness of rules for preparation and use and the observation of these rules, qualification and training of technical personnel and control personnel. However, the design stage, and consequently, the principal scheme and construction play, as a rule, the decisive role, since in the development one not only imposes technical bases for fail-safe operation, the principles of providing design and structural reliability, but one may also prepare the basis and designate a corresponding effective program of organizational and technical measures to provide reliability for all subsequent
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