http://www.militarymuseum.org/Lockheed-Skunk-Works.pdf Skunk Works history is nice reading for someone results oriented...

There's also "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich for a more intimate perspective.

The one on breaking the mishap chain is great.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/643903main_BreakingMishapChain-eboo...

Can anyone recommend a book for an introduction level (i.e. tutorial or cookbook style) coverage of Fault Tree Analysis? I've seen it mentioned in article about SpaceX blowups, it is something I'd like to understand better.

Fault Tree Analysis is fairly simple. http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol4iss47.htm

Having a clear understanding of the dependencies of the components of the system, and the ways they can fail/degrade, is the hard part.

Thanks so much for this. Our team recently did a Lynda course on ITIL problem management strategies and this technique was universally misunderstood. This article was much clearer.

I'm glad I got to see this as I worked through Operation Overflight (book of Francis Gary Powers) as a kid but never followed up on the technical details and development. I started with the ending instead of the beginning!

Teenage me would have loved this. Middle age me is still interested.

Yeah, the idea of the books is great... but I doubt I'll ever get around to reading any of them very closely.