Lu,
I asked the question because I supervised the design of fail safe, redundant control systems for a large theme park operator in Florida. This involved conducting a FMEA on those systems and whenever I highlighted a potential problem the resistance / abuse I received was unbelievable.
This normally came from the non technical project manager who's prime objective was schedule and budget. Frequently I was in the position of having to explain why a component could fail rather than the vendor / contractor explaining why it wouldn't, with the project manager vigorously defending the vendor to the point of, the moon is made out of green cheese and I cant afford a budget or schedule hit.
I think I'm fortunate to have completed an apprenticeship in the Royal Navy as an avionics engineer and as a result of this had the balls to argue my point and sometimes manage to get designs modified or changed. Quite Often engineers would back down after heated shouting matches and the design would remain as is (complete with single point and latent failures).
There were many exceptional engineers at this company but from my experience there were very few people who really understood the following terms
Single point failure
Latent failure
fail safe
fault tolerance
redundancy
Are there any similarities within the industries you have experience with? and does any of this apply to the V22 program.
Jiff