How a Billion-Dollar Satellite Risks Upending the Space Insurance Industry (yahoo.com) 86
"Viasat Inc. has more than $1 billion of orbiting satellites in trouble," reports Bloomberg, "and space insurers are girding for market-rattling claims."
The company's roughly $1 billion ViaSat-3 Americas satellite, central to expanding its fixed-broadband coverage and fending off rivals including Elon Musk's Starlink, suffered an unexpected problem as it deployed its antenna in orbit in April. Should Viasat declare it a total loss, industry executives estimate the claim would reach a record-breaking $420 million and, in turn, make it harder — and more expensive — for other satellite operators to get insurance... Viasat on Aug. 24 reported another stricken spacecraft, saying its Inmarsat-6 F2 satellite launched in February suffered a power problem. The failure may end the craft's useful life and result in a $350 million insurance claim, Space Intel Report said.
Viasat's troubles in orbit come a few years after big-name insurers like American International Group Inc. and Allianz SE have shuttered their space portfolios. That's left a smaller pool of providers to absorb the risks in the notoriously high-stakes $553 million market...
Following news of the Inmarsat-6 anomaly, Viasat and other industry participants "will likely experience significant challenges with obtaining insurance for future satellite launches," [investment banking firm] William Blair's Louie DiPalma said in an Aug. 25 note... In 2019, the total losses from satellite claims amounted to $788 million, which overwhelmed the total premiums for the year at $500 million, according to launch and satellite database Seradata. In the years that followed, big names like American International Group Inc., Swiss Re AG, and Allianz SE all closed the door on satellite insurance.
Earlier this month Viasat's CEO says before deciding whether they'll file a claim, "There's no consequences to us taking another couple or three months to get good measurements and then making those decisions."
Viasat's troubles in orbit come a few years after big-name insurers like American International Group Inc. and Allianz SE have shuttered their space portfolios. That's left a smaller pool of providers to absorb the risks in the notoriously high-stakes $553 million market...
Following news of the Inmarsat-6 anomaly, Viasat and other industry participants "will likely experience significant challenges with obtaining insurance for future satellite launches," [investment banking firm] William Blair's Louie DiPalma said in an Aug. 25 note... In 2019, the total losses from satellite claims amounted to $788 million, which overwhelmed the total premiums for the year at $500 million, according to launch and satellite database Seradata. In the years that followed, big names like American International Group Inc., Swiss Re AG, and Allianz SE all closed the door on satellite insurance.
Earlier this month Viasat's CEO says before deciding whether they'll file a claim, "There's no consequences to us taking another couple or three months to get good measurements and then making those decisions."
Re:THAT is what insurance is FOR!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
should not be a required purchase absent related price consolidation and review
Fine with me, as long as every driver who refuses insurance puts the full legally required minimum liability amount into an escrow account that can be used to pay for any damages inflicted on others.
- companies should not be allowed to exit markets where they have claims that cause them losses. Either insure everyone or insure noone.
Maybe you could force them to stay around, but you probably won't be able to force them to do business at a guaranteed loss. With climate trends, rates will simply be astronomical. That's why "conservitave-run" Florida is mostly replacing its insurance market with a socialist program that doesn't actually need to use sound actuarial practices (since it can always just fleece the taxpayers).
companies should insure equally situated claims the same. It shouldn't matter what MY CREDIT RATING or MY ZIP CODE. If I'm insuring my 2011 Hyundai Genesis Coupe then I should pay the same as anyone else insuring the same car. PERIOD.
I'll bet that most people posting on this site have better-than-average credit ratings and live in better-than-average zip codes. That probably means that if you force all premiums to be the same, *your* rates will go up.
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companies should insure equally situated claims the same. It shouldn't matter what MY CREDIT RATING or MY ZIP CODE. If I'm insuring my 2011 Hyundai Genesis Coupe then I should pay the same as anyone else insuring the same car. PERIOD.
I'll bet that most people posting on this site have better-than-average credit ratings and live in better-than-average zip codes. That probably means that if you force all premiums to be the same, *your* rates will go up.
Put another way... The poster wants his insurance rates based only on things he can control, while actual insurance must take into account things outside his control. For example, crime rates are (often) different in different localities, etc... I also imagine one's credit rating affects something, otherwise companies wouldn't care about it -- I also imagine those reasons are probably, at least a little, racist.
Re:THAT is what insurance is FOR!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I also imagine those reasons are probably, at least a little, racist.
The outcome is racially biased, but the reasons are not.
The insurance companies want profits. It costs more to insure a vehicle in a high-crime area. So they charge more. But the insurance companies aren't looking at race. They are looking at crime rates.
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I also imagine those reasons are probably, at least a little, racist.
The outcome is racially biased, but the reasons are not.
The insurance companies want profits. It costs more to insure a vehicle in a high-crime area. So they charge more. But the insurance companies aren't looking at race. They are looking at crime rates.
I was referring to the use of credit scores, not zipcodes - sorry if I was confusing. I agree with your rational for the latter.
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I'll just leave this here:
https://medium.com/@anthonyber... [medium.com]
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Why would the minimal required insurance cost more in a high crime area? At least where I am, you only have to have liability insurance to cover repairs/ injuries you might cause. Then there's the extras, collision for if you're at fault and comprehensive, which does include theft as well as weather and such like when a tree fell on my vehicle. While comprehensive will cost more in a high crime area, it is not required.
What does matter for liability is traffic, the more urban, the more expensive as accident
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If statistics show orange drivers crash their cars more, is it racist to charge more for insurance to orange drivers?
I was referring to the use of credit scores, sorry for being confusing.
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is it racist to charge more for insurance for those with lower credit scores?
Nope. Not in the least. However, society needs to examine itself and see why that is happening. Is it genetics or environment.
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If statistics show orange drivers crash their cars more, is it racist to charge more for insurance to orange drivers?
Yes. Treating an individual as a member of their class ("orange" in your example) rather than as a unique human being to whom the stereotypes of their class may or may not apply is the textbook definition of racism, as I learned it.
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I think you are missing the point. If credit scores correlate with insurance losses, then insurance companies are justified in using credit scores to rate insurance.
If later it is found that credit scores also correlate with race, why should that invalidate their earlier use to rate insurance?
Or,
If brown cars are found to cost insurance companies more losses than beige cars, then the insurance company is justified in charging more to insure brown cars.
If it is later found that brown cars are more likely to
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I don't think I missed the point. OP asked the question of whether it would be racist to base insurance premiums on the color of a person's skin, to which I responded "yes". As you note society has generally agreed there should be limits to using an individual's race in that way.
The remainder of your points start getting into a complicated discussion of systemic/structural racism that I don't have the mental energy (or time, unfortunately) to get too deep into. In my opinion, whether it's appropriate to
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Because the ONLY way to get something like that, would be if the stats were done wrong (typically, at too big a geo-physical area) OR, there is a real evolutionary difference that makes that happen. If the former, than it is bad statistician, while with the later, it would be considered racists, but accurate.
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Consider the issue of schools requiring a that all kindis be age 5 before say end of sept. Why is this done?
Because back in the 60s, a smart guy did some stats, but misapplied them. He accumulated all of the stats about kids for when they started school and found that if they started younger that they did not do well. In fact, that same study has led to schools holding back boys claiming that they will do badly. So, how was the data aggregated? By states. So based on that dat
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Sadly, every idiot in America runs around screaming RACISM, SEXISM, etc. I had hope that you idiots would not come to
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That's why "conservitave-run" Florida is mostly replacing its insurance market with a socialist program that doesn't actually need to use sound actuarial practices (since it can always just fleece the taxpayers).
Not to mention the billions in National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) payments, without with Florida would be a nonviable place to own a home. Florida isn't just fleecing their taxpayers, they're fleecing all of us.
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Since you share the road with other drivers, then by definition, driving is "spreading risk".
Like I said, go ahead and skip the insurance, as long as you have posted few hundred $K in escrow in case your "risk" harms someone else.
However, you don't have any right to cause a bunch of damages, then just declare bankruptcy and duck the consequences.
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The problem is that for-profit insurances charge large amounts of premium and pull out some major profits, as opposed to saving it for when things get really bad. As such, they will then pull out of a state or simply bankrupt to avoid
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We probably should fix the required legal minimums. In my state, the minimum is $10k in property damage, and $30k in injury for auto insurance.
That helps keep insurance rates low, but that won't cover a bad injury that keeps someone in the hospital for a few days, or even an accidental where there are no inj
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This is literally "space" insurance for those who put satellites into space and are large corporation who can afford to either: 1) pay the increased premiums or 2) decide to fly their satellites with no insurance (and effectively self insure). No one is holding a gun to their head, and if a $500 million satellite cost $400 million to insure, then they would probably opt for option 2. Something tells me that the company with by far the most satellites (i.e. many thousands of satellites) and also the company
Re:THAT is what insurance is FOR!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
High rates will help SpaceX consolidate its lead.
SpaceX doesn't insure its rockets or payloads, so will pay no additional cost.
SpaceX only carries 3rd party liability insurance that is required by the FAA.
ViaSat is doing it wrong. Instead of a single billion dollar satellite, they should be launching lots of little expendable satellites like StarLink does.
Re:THAT is what insurance is FOR!!! (Score:4, Informative)
ViaSat-3 is a geostationnary satellite, fundamentally different from the constellation of low-orbit and soon-to-re-enter Starlink satellites.
Major paradigm shift.
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ViaSat-3 is a geostationnary satellite, fundamentally different from the constellation of low-orbit and soon-to-re-enter Starlink satellites.
That in and of itself is reason to wonder what the heck they were thinking. Between the unavoidably high latency and the more expensive launch costs, geostationary satellites are fossils these days. Why would anybody launch one now? I guess they had already ordered these when Starlink began launching satellites? If so, they're probably really glad for an opportunity to write the satellite off as a loss and get that money back from their insurance provider.
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Weather monitoring.
Monitoring GHG overall flow (though not down to extreme levels).
Weapons monitoring i.e. Nuclear ICBM launches
1-way beaming such as TV.
And there are plenty of others.
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Weather monitoring.
Not with communications satellites.
Monitoring GHG overall flow (though not down to extreme levels).
Not with communications satellites.
Weapons monitoring i.e. Nuclear ICBM launches
Not with communications satellites. Also much better with LEO satellites because of resolution.
1-way beaming such as TV.
Which makes up a rapidly decreasing percentage of the way that TV gets delivered to consumers these days, so there's likely not a lot of need for increasing the amount of bandwidth available for those purposes.
Like I said, I can't imagine why anyone would launch a geostationary communications satellite these days unless they had already placed
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geostationary satellites are fossils these days.
Your words, not mine. I simply showed that geostat are not fossils, but misapplied for e2e communication.
It could be used for outbound communications to other planets and DSN. Though I think that we should instead put comm sats in Lagrange points, such as EL1 (for the moon), along with ES 3, 4, and 5 (for mars and deep space).
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geostationary satellites are fossils these days.
Your words, not mine. I simply showed that geostat are not fossils, but misapplied for e2e communication.
In the context of this discussion about communications satellites, I kind of thought it would be obvious that I was talking about communications satellites, and that I didn't need to add that qualifier.
That said, those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Yes, there are certain very specialized satellites that are better in geostationary orbits. There are even a few really obscure situations where non-TV communications satellites need to be geostationary, such as TDRS.
But out of the roughly 580 geostat
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companies should insure equally situated claims the same. It shouldn't matter what MY CREDIT RATING or MY ZIP CODE
Different zip codes by definition are differently situated. Crime rates tend to be different in different areas.
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You're both right in this case. Car insurance is mandatory in every state. Therefore we should have an at-cost national insurance program to cover it. Nobody should be profiting off legal requirements.
Driving is a privilege, some say, but our nation was literally deprived of alternatives by a convicted conspiracy to force people to drive cars by destroying profitable mass transportation systems, so driving should be a right until that defect is corrected.
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Re: THAT is what insurance is FOR!!! (Score:2)
Everything you said there was a lie, but because you're an AC there's no benefit in actually addressing any of your points. Stop checking that box if you want a meaningful debate.
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You know, there is a saying that you desperately need to think about and follow:
It is better to be quiet and be thought an idiot, then to speak up and prove it.
when things like TBC or monorail exists with much lower costs.
Of course TBC is cheaper, it is much smaller and does not provide as many passegners.
You are just as insane about clean energy by pushing nothing but wind/PV, while fighting Nuclear, Geothermal, Hydro, etc.
a 10MW solar farm / wind is much easier to build then a 10MW Nuclear, Geothermal or Hydro plant. This means more people are willing to build them.
Show us a PROFITABLE mass transit system in America. Go ahead. Show us all that are running in a city as well as between cities.
Show us a PROFITABLE highway system in America. Go ahead. Show us all that are running in a city as well as between cities.
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should not be a required purchase absent related price consolidation and review
We've tried that world. It was fucked. No thanks. If you can't afford insurance for your car then you can't afford to have an accident and thus should have your driving privileges revoked due to the net negative impact you pose on society.
companies should not be allowed to exit markets where they have claims that cause them losses. Either insure everyone or insure noone.
Companies aren't doing that. They are literally choosing to "insure noone" in this instance.
companies should insure equally situated claims the same
Insurance companies do. They apply a the same risk formula to everyone. Not everyone generates the same risk but they are all treated equally in the formula. Where you live, how you
Antenna problem? (Score:2)
Re:Antenna problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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High gain antennas ... typically require some sort of deployment because they're too big to fit in the rocket. This generally involves a large number of hinges, or motors, or folded things with a lot of potential failure points. Hence them being a recurring problem.
Can't wait to see a high-gain antenna used as a metaphor in a Cialis/Viagra commercial ... :-)
Re:Antenna problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also in a near vacuum there's less stuff to convince two parts they're not actually one part when they touch each other...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Good link, exactly why many of us come to Slashdot.
Re:Antenna problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Fancy engineers make motors and gears that crank out the antennas into their full glory. This is considered very professional. They often fail.
Cowboy engineers use metal springs and solenoids to release them. Totally not reversible. This is considered amateur hour and for pansies. They almost always work.
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The problem with springs is that it's difficult to control the speed of deployment, leading to vibrations and potential damage to joints. As you mention, you also can't reverse them if something gets stuck. A recent ESA mission was able to fix a stuck antenna by reversing the motor a few times.
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> having problems going back to the Galileo probe.
The likely problem with Galileo is that it sat in storage too long because the Challenger shuttle disaster delayed its launch. They should have re-lubed it, but some accounts are they they didn't want to risk damaging it during a re-lube, which required a delicate operation, because for some reason the back-up parts were not available at the time.
Total loss assets... (Score:3)
If the satellite is declared a total loss... will the insurer take control of it and then attempt to auction it off to someone who can send up a mission to restore it to operation and then resell it back to Viasat in the event it starts working again?
it's called salvage (Score:2)
And yes, it is the property of whomever paid the claim.
They will sell the salvage to the buyer that offers the highest price within a time frame.
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More likely they would simply seek to pay someone to go fix it, instead of paying Viasat. If that was possible, which it probably isn't.
Nobody has a shuttle, or even a crewed capsule rated for EVAs. From the sound of the fault it might be fixable with a robot, but a very sophisticated one would be needed.
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That would make a semi decent movie except it turns out the satellite broke because of some eldritch horror birthing itself through a cross dimensional quantum quasi portal opened up in the semi regressed nano-coupled sciencewords due to reasons. Get some B list action guy up there (probably with a chinese costar/love interest because ya know, gotta get that funding), a bag of popcorn and your night is set. Actually, its probably already on netflix somewhere.
You Sir win the award for most plot lines ever. But if I'm going to watch a Science Fiction/Horror/Fantasy B Movie, it better have a Sybil Danning ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm00... [imdb.com] ) or Caroline Munro ( https://www.imdb.com/name/nm06... [imdb.com] ) level of female actress ;)
Ya, but ... (Score:2)
Don't insurance companies usually try to recoup their payout expenses by trying to recover those costs from the people/companies that caused the issue that required the payout? For example, if the launch vehicle explodes, they try to recover funds from whoever made the rocket; if the antenna doesn't deploy, they try to recover funds from whoever made that, etc... (Or from those entities insurance company.) That's pretty much how it works with automobile insurance.
onboard repair robots? (Score:3)
Are any satellites launching with onboard repair robots yet? They'd aim at being small and simple and slow, co-opting the big satellite for communication, and able to crawl around and poke hinges and such.
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I guess that there is no pressure do design and deploy such robots if it's simpler to cash the insurance for a lost satellite.
I suppose you could make a comparison between the insurance premium cost and the cost to design, test and develop such robots.
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Such robots don't exist and would be extremely complex to design. They would have to have a huge range of movement and dexterity. Weight would also be a major issue - it increases launch costs, for something that if only needed if you screwed up.
Given the frequency with which these things happen, and the falling price of developing and launching satellites, the R&D costs of such a robot would probably outweigh its value.
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Space is hard. We're talking here about failures of simple deployment mechanisms. Getting a full on complex machine to survive in space is orders of magnitude more difficult and more expensive then designing some redundancy. In many cases actual satellite related failures are also due to fundamental design flaws so robots won't help you there.
TIL Viasat bought Inmarsat in 2022 (Score:2)
Today I learned Viasat bought Inmarsat in 2022.
Anyone know how Inmarsat Global Xpress is going these days?
it's a gamble (Score:3)
Insurance is gambling
playing the numbers game
usually stacked in the insurers favour
hey, suck eggs, the casino lost this time
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Medical insurance is a bit different though since part of insuring good health is maintenance of said health. But you are free to go without.
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Well, if the casino loses consistently, it will GTFO rather quickly. If a gambler loses consistently... he will continue to gamble. That's why the game needs to be stacked in casino's favour. This is the only way for the business to keep rolling.
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The issue is that they will put up premiums to cover their losses from this. Everyone's premiums.
The numbers shifted due to the massive pay out.
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ViaSat-3 is geostationary (Score:3)
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The RTT to GEO combined with the encoding means about 750ms of lag in the real world (At least that's my personal experience of Exede, which is on Viasat) and that is worthless for gaming and bad for VoIP but fine for every other common use case. You barely notice it while browsing, it's irrelevant to downloads or streaming, etc.
I wasn't happy with it of course, but most people (who don't play twitch games online) won't have a problem with the performance except on stormy days.
Fiery Death... (Score:2)
Well...don't put a billion dollars in one basket. (Score:2)
The satellite industry would probably sue the doctor for malpractice.
If you can't do the time (Score:2)
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This is why the industry needs to self-insure (Score:3)
The space industry (ideally the west, but certainly American) would be better off if they created an insurance company that all of them owned and paid into when needing to insure. Build up the pool and then, when large, re-invest back into these companies themselves.
It is crazy to waste money on for-profit insurances and banks.
I love this at scale (Score:1)