[amsat-bb] SpaceX Launch Failure Today

[Jim White]

In general:
- Government payloads don't buy insurance as they consider themselves 
self insuring.
- Commercial payloads nearly always buy insurance, usually against 
launch failure and on-orbit failure.  The premiums can be as much as 1/3 
the cost of the satellite and launch.  The exceptions are the really big 
goesync fleet operators who self insure.
- Small payloads like universities would not want to pay for insurance 
and there is no one who would write that policy anyway.

The launch vehicle folks do not guarantee delivery.  In fact their 
contracts have more pages absolving themselves of blame or liability 
than any other part of the contract.  For smallish sats going along with 
big sats the launch vehicle contracts often don't even guarantee they 
will put your sat on a particular launch or into a particular orbit. 
There are exceptions of course, directly tied to how much you are 
willing to pay.

Jim

On 6/28/2015 8:15 PM, Steve May wrote:
> I'm curious about the payloads on these rockets that fail. Is there any
> guarantee on the "delivery" of the payloads, even the paid ones? Or is
> there any sort of insurance that can be purchased in events such as this?
>
> Steve, W5IEM
>
> On Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 1:24 PM B J <va6bmj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 6/28/15, Alan <wa4sca at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> http://preview.tinyurl.com/qfyz92n
>>>
>>> Key point:  nobody hurt.
>> <snip>
>>
>> The flight looked like it was proceeding normally until close before
>> the point when staging would have occurred.  I watched the video and I
>> didn't hear a controller mention anything unusual until the mishap
>> occurred.
>>
>> 73s
>>
>> Bernhard VA6BMJ @ DO33FL
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> _______________________________________________
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