Aiming at the shortcomings of the traditional maintenance plan of a launching system, an analysis was made on the development of the reliability centered maintenance methods (RCM) and the basic models for reliability centered maintenance of a launching system are presented in this paper. The common methods for functional impor- tant product determination, failure modes and effect analysis ( FMEA ) and logic decision analysis were illustrated and the basic methods for maintenance interval calculation models were studied based on availability. According to the research, the reliability centered maintenance plan of a certain launching system was given.