Satellite Owner Says SpaceX Owes $50 Million Or Free Flight (reuters.com) 239
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Israel's Space Communication Ltd said on Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from Elon Musk's SpaceX after a Spacecom communications satellite was destroyed last week by an explosion at SpaceX's Florida launch site. Officials of the Israeli company said in a conference call with reporters Sunday that Spacecom also could collect $205 million from Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the AMOS-6 satellite. Spacecom has been hit hard in the aftermath of the Thursday explosion that destroyed the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its payload. The Israeli company said the loss of the satellite would have a significant impact, with its equity expected to decline by $30 million to $123 million. Spacecom shares dropped 9 percent on Thursday, with the explosion occurring late in the last trading day of the week. Trading in the shares was suspended on Sunday morning, and the stock plummeted another 34 percent when trading resumed. In a conference call with reporters, Spacecom's general counsel Gil Lotan said it was too early to say if the company's planned merger with Beijing Xinwei Technology Group would proceed. Xinwei last month agreed to buy Spacecom for $285 million, saying the deal was contingent on the successful launch and operation of Spacecom's AMOS-6 satellite. The $200 million AMOS-6 satellite that perished in the explosion belonged to Facebook and was going to be used to beam internet to developing parts of the world.
Spaceflight is risky (Score:5, Insightful)
Launching doubly so. OK this was a ground test of the engines. We still don't know what caused the explosion.
And hey, wasn't the satellite INSURED??
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Who in their right mind would insure a satellite of that cost for flight on an experimental vehicle? I can't see any insurance company betting on something that high risk.
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:5, Funny)
There are insurance companies that do, but the premiums skyrocket.
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You could even say that they are astronomical.
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Car insurance makes sense, because car accidents are very seldom compared to the big number of car drivers. If you are involved in an expensive car accident, you shouldn't have to sell your house and everything you own and live in poverty just because of that single accident, which may have been bad luck. Rather, those costs are distributed over the number of insurance customers.
For spacex, it makes no sense to be insured: there are maybe two or three companies in the world that offer the services spacex of
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It happens to everyone in the space industry.
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It's possible to have rocket launch failures where the rocket doesn't explode. And even if it does explode and they have enough warning, e.g. the Apollo craft had the Launch Escape System [wikipedia.org] to get the payload (including astronauts...) out of harm's way.
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Everyone who can assess the risk. Premium is payout * expected risk + profit.
You can insure anything. If you're willing to pay the premium. You can even insure something against an event that will certainly happen, just be prepared to pay a premium higher than the damage.
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes the Falcon 9 an "experimental vehicle" any more than any other launch system?
The Falcon 9 has had 27 successful launches and 2 failures in 6 years. It has had three major variations in that time (v1.0, v1.1 and FT).
The Ariane 5 has had 83 successful launches and 2 failures in 20 years. It has had five major variations in that time (G, G+, GS, ECA and ES).
The Atlas V has had 60 successful launches and no failures in 14 years. It has had nine major variations which have flown in that time.
I'm not seeing anything which would put the Falcon 9 into a higher risk band than its contemporaries...
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Are you sure? I can see that, at its best, Falcon has had nearly 4 times fewer flights and matches the number of failures in a shorter lifespan than Ariane 5. And that's with the contemporaries introducing more variations. That's putting Falcon 9 at somewhere between 33% and 45% more failures than its two contemporaries. What metrics do you look at to determine risk? Everything I'm looking at says that Falcon 9 is a poor gamble, at best.
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The number of failures doesn't make a vehicle "experimental", and the point of the figures is to show that the Falcon 9 is launching pretty much on the same cadence as two very-much-not experimental rockets.
The Falcon 9 is no more experimental than either of the two examples I give.
On another note, you say that the Falcon 9 has had nearly 4 times fewer flights and matches the number of failures in a shorter lifespan than the Ariane 5. This is true.
Its also totally misleading, because the Ariane 5 had had b
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Falcon has had nearly 4 times fewer flights and matches the number of failures in a shorter lifespan than Ariane 5.
There's this thing called math that shows across the variants the Ariane 5 on average has had less than double the number of successful launches than a Falcon 9 which incidentally has had a higher number of successful launches per variant than the Atlas V.
You missed that key word "variant", a variation or change in design that makes a ship different to the previous one. Based on the this Atlas V is more experimental than the Falcon 9.
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You missed that key word "variant", a variation or change in design that makes a ship different to the previous one
Is that change in a design, like the logo painted on the side? Or a completely new engine subsystem? My guess is that it's much closer to the former.
Because you only factor ariane 5 and NÂ launc (Score:2)
In reality the people working on the Ariane family have a far longer experience at launching a sat, and THAT count for a lot. SpaceX may have quite a few launches, but nothing on the historical track records various space agencies have. Number of launch is not everything.
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Launch Vehicle by Success Rate :
http://www.spacelaunchreport.c... [spacelaunchreport.com]
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Falcon 9 v1.2 8 8 1.00 .90(D) 8 None 2015-
Last failure = none. Seems like this document is a bit out of date (or it's not listing previous failures since it was a different version (they list no other Falcon 9 variant).
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It has an even easier explanation:
This was something in the launch contract and a previously agreed upon penalty that would happen if the launch didn't happen. Spacecom is just stating publicly that this clause exists.... something that seems prudent if they are trying to assure their investors that they can financially recover from this disaster.
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On the other hand, who in their right mind launches a satallite of that cost for flight on an experimental vehicle without some kind of insurance?
Whether it's technically "insurance", I can't see a company putting such expensive equipment at risk, even the risk of a conventional launch, without a plan of what happens when things go wrong. Even in the case that it's a high-stakes gamble, there should be legal agreements spelling out liability, and exactly what SpaceX is responsible for.
Also, I could see a
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Who in their right mind would insure a satellite of that cost for flight on an experimental vehicle? I can't see any insurance company betting on something that high risk.
Insurance, corporate gambling where the house (almost) always wins. I'd self insure my car if it wasn't for regulations and the possibility of getting successfully sued for hitting someone if they run a red light.
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First of all, how is this an experimental vehicle and how do you jump to the conclusion that it is such? What was done in this particular SpaceX flight was to do the equivalent of somebody sitting down and turning on the engines and checking the fluids of their car and doing other basic diagnostics evaluating the status of a vehicle before going on a long trip. While unusual for most other companies, it spe
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Who in their right mind would launch a satellite worth as much as their entire company on an experimental rocket?
Someone who is taking a risk, hoping for a big payday if they succeed.
For the failures, there are the bankruptcy courts..
It's called getting rich quick.. Rolling the dice... Betting the farm... Ect.. People do it all the time and loose.
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For the failures, there are the bankruptcy courts..
... and lawsuits.
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of satellites are not insured. Buying insurance means that you pay money to reduce financial risk. On average, you pay more than you would without insurance. That's how insurances make money. If you can afford the risk, you'll probably not want to pay for insurance.
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:5, Informative)
You ALWAYS pay more than the average risk is worth when you buy insurance.... Individuals who suffer an insured loss *sometimes* recover more than they have paid in premiums, but this is the exception.
In my 35 years as an insured motorist I have had 3 claims, two accidents and one hail claim. I estimate the TOTAL paid for these claims to be under $25K. In 35 years I've paid more than $1,000/year in premiums and I estimate that I've paid about 4 times the amount of the paid claims.
I'm keeping the auto insurance company in business.... They know that.... They make SURE you pay generally more than you cost them. You may be up on the house from time to time, but like the casino and gambling, the insurance company (the house) ALWAYS wins.
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In my 35 years as an insured motorist I have had 3 claims, two accidents and one hail claim. I estimate the TOTAL paid for these claims to be under $25K. In 35 years I've paid more than $1,000/year in premiums and I estimate that I've paid about 4 times the amount of the paid claims.
Most people do, that is how insurance works... The idea is that if you ever have a big claim, you are then glad you have it...
I pay about $1,700 a year to insure two vehicles and provide me with 300k in liability coverage (the state required levels are a joke and should be raised).
I might pay for 20 years, but if I ever crash into someone and cause them medical injuries, that 300k of coverage will come in really handy.
Honestly, now that I think about it, it still isn't enough... :) Time to raise that...
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You insure what you cannot afford to loose.... But remember, having high insurance coverage makes you a target, just as much as having assets to loose.
I figure that if I get into a serious accident that's my fault and I have legal liability, I want enough insurance that it's not worth trying to go after me for more than the insurance company will pay.
So, if you don't have much in assets, don't bother buying additional insurance. Now if you HAVE something, THEN by all means, up your liability coverage, if
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You insure what you cannot afford to loose.... But remember, having high insurance coverage makes you a target, just as much as having assets to loose.
You do, if you're a selfish bastard who takes no personal responsibility for anything...
I figure that if I get into a serious accident that's my fault and I have legal liability, I want enough insurance that it's not worth trying to go after me for more than the insurance company will pay.
Or, perhaps you have enough to cover what you are responsible for in the event you hurt someone else.
You know, like a decent human being would...
So, if you don't have much in assets, don't bother buying additional insurance.
Only an asshole thinks like that...
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Ah yes, well, that's true - you do always pay more for insurance than you would if you didn't and the insured event doesn't occur. But that's kind of a moot point isn't it?
Now, if you are arguing that you "always" get less payout than your premiums even if you have an insured event, then either you need to pick a different insurance provider, try to change legislation to fix the rules that facilitate such economic inefficiency, or challenge insurance fraud investigators' prowess by trying to extract the ma
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Launching doubly so. OK this was a ground test of the engines. We still don't know what caused the explosion.
And hey, wasn't the satellite INSURED??
Why was it even attached during the test of the engines?
Re:Spaceflight is risky (Score:4, Informative)
Because integration of the payload onto the stack takes days to carry out and test - you simply cant do a test and then reintegrate the payload because that means much more time between the test and launch, which means the test is basically invalidated.
I'm not sure if the stack remains vertical after the test, but I would think that raising and lowering the stack to and from a vertical position introduces brand new variables all of its own (moving debris around internally etc).
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Two days
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It's probably only designed to detach the way it does during the mission once. You've heard of explosive bolts?
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Because the actual launch is typically just a couple of days after the static test firing. It is a complete system check prior to launch.
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Why was it even attached during the test of the engines?
Because they didn't expect this to be anything other than routine. If they knew it was going to blow up, they wouldn't have had the satellite on the vehicle.
This was the full-up test, verifying everything was ready to go.
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Because it's a test of the whole stack from what I understand. There may (for example) be a destructive resonance that could destroy the rocket in flight which could be detected during an engine test, which only occurs when the payload is installed. You obviously want to find this out now when you can abort a test and find out what's causing the resonance, rather than when the rocket blows up ten seconds after launch.
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Risky doesn't mean impossible.
We can go to Mars if we want to throw enough money at it. Living there in a self-sustaining colony of healthy human beings is probably awaiting several engineering and medical breakthroughs, though.
If you're willing to risk a roughly 99% chance of dying in flight due to environmental failure, we could manage an interstellar generation ship - again, by throwing enough money at it.
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I find it incredible that Facebook didn't think of something like that. Calculating the risk of a launch failure is baked into every satellite revenue projection, leading to a decision to either buy insurance or self-insure.
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(Obviously I haven't seen the actual contract, but as those clauses are standard for everybody else in the space industry, I see no reason why SpaceX wouldn't have them as well, they aren
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Yeah - luckily the Protons are not, in any way, subsidized by the Russian government so that makes the comparison unfair?
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So in Soviet (and post-Soviet) Russia no one can really estimate the real cost of something even remotely related to military.
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Because they aren't comparable. The proton's lift capacity is a good 20% lower than what the Falcon 9 can do - and they get to launch much closer to the equator so you need a lot less (expensive) orbital manoeuvring (Soviet launches end up in pretty terribly inclined orbits) so you can put less fuel on the satelite wihich means more of that already higher weight allowance can be used for the actual useful payload.
In short - a Falcon 9 is actually less expensive pound-for-pound than a proton.
And it blows the
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A disaster waiting to happen?
How much longer should we wait for that disaster to happen?
NASA no longer launches rockets and given that two space shuttles were lost along with their entire crews I'd say that NASA's more expensive projects have had some disasters of their own already.
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That is like complaining about the difference in spelling between dwarves and dwarfs (something that JRR Tolkein himself spilled far too much ink over if you want to get into the details.... and it was Tolkein who coined "dwarfs" too). Spelling something "hobbiest" really is a valid, if perhaps from a 21st Century rather archaic way of spelling things.
Really, complaining about this as a grammar Nazi is about as low and uninformed as you can get.
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"Hobbiest" is the one who is "most hobby", duh.
Spacecraft did not belong to Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
What's with these summaries? Facebook had nothing to do with the spacecraft, other than the fact that they had an agreement in place to lease a significant portion of the Ka-Band transponders on the satellite.
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Because "Facebook" is clickbait for the /. set.
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The fact that he's going to save the world is pretty much the problem, 'cause we ain't going to be the ones who get to decide what to restore and when.
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And just 'cause Google still exists means I can't hate Fecesbook? That's like saying I can't hate Trump 'cause Clinton is still existing.
The idea that both are despicable is impossible, yes?
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Obviously the turd with the peanut is better than the turd with the corn.
Duh. Why would anyone think that they are both disgusting?
Reusable...? ;-) (Score:2)
Satellite owner is full of shit. (Score:2)
If they did not pay for insurance, then they are morons. I guarantee the launch contract states, "this may blow up, we are not responsible"
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They had insurance, two forms actually.
Transport insurance is relatively cheap, ~0.6% of the $200M.
Launch insurance is much more, about 6% of the cost.
Since this was pre-launch it is covered by the transport insurance and the transport insurance writer is having a very bad day.
What the Israeli company is really upset about is that their acquisition (aka massive payday for their execs) by a large Chinese company was contingent on a successful launch, and has now fallen through. This has caused their stock pr
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Then they were stupid as fuck to allow that contingency clause for a series of actions (the launch contractor phases) that Spacecom itself had NO control over and didn't actually do itself.
Their job was to build the bird and deliver it. They did that. Hopefully Facebook paid their sorry butts for it. So the next set of steps was on SpaceX and it blew up. OK, well it's probably not Spacecom's fault.. Nobody knows. But probably not their fault.
Now they are saying the buyer they had no longer wants to bu
Free flight? (Score:2)
They got paid, why do they even care? (Score:2)
Presumably Facebook contracted with this company to supply the satellite. They did that. They should have gotten paid.
If you or I go buy a new car, we pay for it, and wreck it on the way home, the car dealer is not going to be out. We agreed to pay. Likewise Facebook surely agreed to pay for the damn thing. So what are they whining about?
The failure on the pad probably wasn't their fault so even if there was some kind of contingency, they should still get paid. They delivered the vehicle to the
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No. Facebook was to lease part of the payload. Facebook has nothing to do with the satellite otherwise.
The satellite did not "belong to Facebook" (Score:2)
What kind of journalism is this? The satellite did not "belong to Facebook." The company was merely leasing part of the payload.
Re: Don't put your one egg (Score:5, Funny)
When someone cracks your egg, remember there ain't no such thing as a free launch.
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Always have an insurance - if you don't have an insurance for your stuff that's launched then it's your problem.
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Always have an insurance
Never have insurance ... unless it is something you can't afford to lose. The cost of insurance is (expected-loss + insurance-company-overhead + insurance-company-profit). If you self-insure, it is just the expected loss. So never insure anything you can afford to lose. It is a bad bet.
Anyway, it is silly to conjecture about who is responsible for what cost. Here is the answer: Read the launch contract.
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Always have an insurance
Never have insurance ... unless it is something you can't afford to lose. The cost of insurance is (expected-loss + insurance-company-overhead + insurance-company-profit). If you self-insure, it is just the expected loss. So never insure anything you can afford to lose. It is a bad bet.
Anyway, it is silly to conjecture about who is responsible for what cost. Here is the answer: Read the launch contract.
Wrong.When you self insure, you do not incur the "expected loss". You incur the "actual loss", which may be nothing, or could be more than anything you have.
If I had a $1m car, if I crashed it, I could lose $1m. But If I insured, I would lose the expected loss plus the overhead and profit margin.
The point of insurance is to remove uncertainty. Insurance is not a bad bet. Even very large companies such as Apple will insure because it is sensible to do so.
If you are self-insuring, you might not be using the f
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If you're self-insuring, the funds you set aside can sit in a 1% market fund and collect interest, or in a longer-term fund with bigger payouts. In general, you'll have liquid capital and such investments; if you have a risk event and tap your liquid capital, then you stop putting profits into your investment accounts and top your liquid capital back up. You might need to take a short-term loan and wait 6 months so you can pull money out of your investments--lose an extra 0.5%, pay it back with money tha
Re: Don't put your one egg (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost of insurance is (expected-loss + insurance-company-overhead + insurance-company-profit). If you self-insure, it is just the expected loss.
Not true. The cost of insurance is (expected loss * probability of loss + insurance company profit / overhead). The cost of self insuring is either 0 or the expected loss. It only makes sense to self insure if you have a large number of things that you can average the risk over. It's also often a good idea to take a middle path. For example, the university that I work for gets a good deal on travel insurance, because the underwriters only have to cover very rare (and expensive) payouts. For smaller things, the university covers them itself out of overhead - these things are small and (averaged over all of the staff and students that qualify for the insurance) statistically easy to predict. They know roughly how much the payouts are going to be each year and budget for it. It wouldn't make sense to pass this onto an insurer, because we'd be paying them more than we're getting back. For particularly unusual events, we are covered, because then we average the risk not just among our own staff and students, but among the other tens or hundreds of thousands of people covered by the underwriter's policy. We will, on average, pay more than we get back, but in any given year we might get a lot more back than we pay and it's far easier to budget for that.
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It only makes sense to self insure if you have a large number of things that you can average the risk over. It's also often a good idea to take a middle path. For example, the university that I work for gets a good deal on travel insurance, because the underwriters only have to cover very rare (and expensive) payouts.
In that particular case it might also be to have a professional organization that can help travelers in need, do fraud detection and so on, not the monetary risk as such. It also depends on how deep pockets you can pull on, like NASA is not really just NASA they're a branch of the US government. If you have an understanding that this business unit will ordinarily deliver a good profit and occasionally a huge loss the parent unit/company/owners might decide they'll be your de facto insurance, eating the loss
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It depends on what you mean by "estimated." Insurers estimate probability by statistical analysis, meaning they have large populations and predictable probability of loss. Probability is given by mean, deviation, and confidence interval; analysts use tools such as Monte Carlo Simulation to produce concrete outcomes which say "X outcome is exactly n% likely", which gives you a graph (a Monte Carlo Histogram). The outcome probability will show you that it's e.g. 90% likely you'll pay less than $1000, and
Re: Don't put your one egg (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it's simpler than that. If you have one, insure; rare failures mean insurance is cheap, and frequent failures mean you're taking a bad gamble trying to dodge that hefty premium. If you have one thousand, self-insure; you're approaching risk parity with general population, and insurance would have a lesser stabilizing effect.
Self-insurance doesn't really just save you money. In theory, it's marginally-cheaper than buying insurance; and in practice, many insurance companies charge below-cost premiums to buy an opportunity (you're trying to transfer a threat). Progressive Insurance Co., for example, charges $0.96 in premiums for every $1 paid out; they have an income of $1.02 for every $1 paid out because they buy stable investments and collect interest.
Even without that, you have the risk of coming in a standard deviation lower (opportunity: your failure rate is slightly-lower than average and saves you money) or higher (threat: your failures are frequent, and cost you money). When you have few repeatable risk events (e.g. one car), the difference is 100% of cost, often lopsided (e.g. the cost of insurance is 1% of cost). When you have many repeatable risk events (e.g. a fleet of cars), the difference is in a much narrower range, centered more closely around the cost of insurance (e.g. you can expect to pay 0.98%-1.02% versus insurance). Self-insurance is riskier than insurance, and avoids the cost of logistics to manage insurance, while providing opportunities (e.g. you can skip warranty service for a computer fleet and instead self-insure, and self-build, possibly saving costs if your IT helpdesk is frequently underutilized and has time to replace hard drives or upgrade components).
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And probably, both SpaceX and the sat owner have some kind of insurance coverage.
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SpaceX didn't have insurance. Satellite was insured but it isn't clear if it applies to real launches or to testing too, and if it covers additional consequential losses.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... [bloomberg.com]
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Which is why this whole thread is just silly including all of the counter arguments..... as in this particular case for spaceflight it is required due to regulations made by the FAA-AST (the guys who regulate private commercial spaceflight in the USA). It is also required by treaty so far as it is the government itself that assumes liability for any 3rd party damage... and the government gets that out of the hide of the people who send stuff up.
This payload wo
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There are two kinds of insurance on cars, and so, I'd imagine there would be on aeroplanes, space rockets and just about anything else that flies about.
Third Party - we'll pay to fix up anyone, or anything that is damaged by you
Fully comprehensive - We'll pay to fix you up as well as anything you hit along the way
The first is mandatory (depending on jurisdiction), the second is not. Seemingly Spacecom decided not to bother with the fully comp. insurance and now think that SpaceX should provide the services
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Given the circumstances of how this rocket exploded, it seems entirely reasonable that SpaceX should open up another flight spot to send up a replacement vehicle. The contract was for the flight, not the launch vehicle itself.
As for who is going to foot the bill for that flight... after Spacecom has already paid for this flight that never happened in the first place... that is between SpaceX and any insurance companies they may have against this kind of disaster. In this context, it is likely to be seen a
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I would expect the same sort of thing from FedEx or even the USPS
Someone get on the phone with Elon and let him know that some guy on the internet thinks rocket flights are comparable to a UPS package delivery and that the same replacement policy should apply.
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Insurance is separate (Score:5, Informative)
The point is: SpaceX is cheaper than other space transport systems because it doen't sell you an insurance. When we compare SpaceX launch cost with (e.g.) ESA launch cost, we compare launch cost against launch and insurance cost.
Launch insurance is bookkept separately from launch cost. And you buy it from insurance companies. It typically costs five or six percent of the launch cost, depending on launch vehicle. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/01... [cnbc.com]
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Always have an insurance - if you don't have an insurance for your stuff that's launched then it's your problem.
Insurance is a sucker's bet. Think about it.. You are literally betting that you will loose... Insurance like extended warranties are *always* bad ideas for the consumer. If nothing goes wrong, you pay, If you suffer an insured loss, you pay, perhaps a bit less than the loss, but you pay.
Use insurance as a tool, not as an investment. Of course, use it where legally mandated, as a way to reduce risk (such as buying term life insurance to protect your family) and when creditors mandate it (such as terms fo
Re: Don't put your one egg (Score:2)
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They would probably have been cheaper.
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And what exactly are YOU doing in the various fields of science?
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Because launching rockets is more useful than helping to wipe out disease and paying for education programs? I mean it's more glamourous, but is it a better use of resources?
(Oh man, I just defended Gates and Zuckerberg. I feel physically ill.)
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Yes. In general, launching rockets is more important than helping to wipe out diseases and paying for education programs.
GPS. Communications satellites. Weather satellites. Among many others. Just the weather satellites pay for the entire thing. The gain to the world as a whole to accurate weather forecasting is worth far more tha
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GPS. Communications satellites. Weather satellites.
Except this one was going to primarily beam Facebook-sponsored internet to 3rd world countries.
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So you'd say it's an Umbrella Corporation?
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I see, and what is that you have done that affects millions of people and possibly the future of space colonization? Oh, thats right, nothing - so just sit there criticizing people that have the guts to try.
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Is this quibbling-after-the-fact also business as usual?
I'm not seeing a lot of quibbling; Spacecom is doing a bit of damage control with investors. SpaceX is privately owned, so doesn't need to play that game.
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What sort of dangerous experiments are done when a Falcon-9 is launched? Be specific.
This was the 29th launch of the Falcon-9, the only one to blow up on the launch pad. One other launch blew up in-flight and a third one had a motor failure that resulted in a satellite not achieving orbit but the resupply mission was successful.
So two explosions in 29 launches over 6 years, no lives lost, no dangerous experiments.
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When the N1 rocket was being developed in the Soviet Union, a similar explosion [wikipedia.org] create what could arguably be called one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history [wikipedia.org]. There were unfortunately people near/on the pad of that N1 rocket that died.
SpaceX also dodged a huge bullet so far as window glass of buildings with people in them did break from the explosion of this Falcon 9 rocket. People could have definitely been injured even if it wouldn't have necessarily been life threatening in terms of the dis
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More specifically the Nedelin catastrophe [wikipedia.org]
another link [russianspaceweb.com]
If I'm reading this correctly, something like 250 people died. There seems to be disagreement whether one, or three, guys who were on the pad and survived had gone for a smoke break shortly before the accident.
That is THE Question (Score:2)
In every human endeavor, there is always a point, and then the 98% of everyone else chattering away trying to look clever with what they know about insurance and space flight. "Talking monkeys with car keys," indeed.
THE question of this endeavor is: what went wrong -- and how expensive is it to fix? Until it is known, doubt is going to hang over that program, despite the 27 previous launches that did not explode.
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mmm, afaict there is only one somewhat decent public video of the event and it goes from normal on one frame to a substantial explosion on the next and the insiders aren't talking.
Scott Manly took a look at the video frame by frame https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . It's clear that whatever happened started in the second stage, potentially in the vicinity of the fueling connection.
Also interesting is that the payload seemed to remain attatched to the tower and largely intact for some time after the explosi
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Very fast indeed, but we know it must have fired: the rocket exploded!
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A) This was not a reused first stage. The first re-launch is scheduled to happen in October with SES-10.
B) The explosion was initiated in or around the SECOND stage during fueling. Even if it had been a reused first stage, that fact would've had nothing to do with it.
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Not anymore. At best you can say it is "to be announced" after some significant return to flight effort that will require the FAA-AST to recertify the Falcon 9 as being eligible to launch at all. A total loss of vehicle tends to do that with air and space based vehicles.
Otherwise, you are correct that was when it was previously anticipated that the first lower stage was going to be reused.
I really hope that SpaceX finds and can replicate th
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They weren't bringing the Internet to Africa from what I understand, but rather limited web access to a handful of web sites (one of which was of course Facebook).