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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the liability-only dept.

SpaceX has been required to purchase $63 million of liability coverage for its next launch, up from $13 million:

A SpaceX rocket scheduled to boost a commercial satellite into orbit from Florida before dawn on Tuesday carries five times as much liability coverage for prelaunch operations as launches in previous years. The higher limit, mandated by federal officials, reflects heightened U.S. concerns about the potential extent of damage to nearby government property in the event of an accident before blastoff. But at this point it isn't clear what specifically prompted imposition of higher liability coverage on Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

On a related note, SpaceX's most recently scheduled launch has been delayed:

Targeting Thursday, March 16 for @EchoStar XXIII launch; window opens at 1:35am EDT and weather is 90% favorable.

If you are in the area, and can hang around for another couple days, there's a Delta 4 launch scheduled for Friday shortly after sunset (2344 UTC).


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:05PM (18 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:05PM (#479508)

    Maybe they should just move future launches to a new site that doesn't require such expensive insurance coverage.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:16PM (15 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:16PM (#479512)

      One would hope that they'll make their launches reliable enough to drop the insurance premiums, long before they'd amortize the hundreds of millions it costs to setup a new launch site.

      The $63M is the coverage, not the premium they pay.
      If they keep blowing up so much they can't afford coverage, they won't need it anyway.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:31PM (3 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:31PM (#479516)

        Why would it cost hundreds of millions to set up a new launch site? There's plenty of launch sites around the world. There's one not too far from me here in Virginia, which ULA uses. There's others outside the US.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:43PM (#479520)

          Virginia is not as favorable as Florida. Due to the higher latitude, the rocket needs more fuel to reach orbit. Rockets use the earth's rotational speed (1670 km/h times cosine of latitude) to give a running start. In Wallops island, VA that initial speed is 1315 km/h. At Cape Canaveral it's 1468 km/h.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:45PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:45PM (#479521)

          For the Apollo pad, they had to build a new horizontal assembly facility, and a carrier that raises the Falcon 9 (NASA assembly was vertical). Plus the upgrades to the comms/control systems, fueling systems... Just about everything.

          Similar changes will be required anywhere they go. Rockets are finicky beasts where pretty much everything is custom, even the exhaust trench...

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Leebert on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:42AM

          by Leebert (3511) on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:42AM (#479634)

          I'm puzzled by this as well. As some of you know, I work at NASA, and I've done a fair number of visits to Kennedy. I can't really think of anything anywhere near pad 39A that is actually *worth* $63M. It's more than 3 miles from the closest "expensive" buildings (the VAB and the buildings clustered around it), and if the rocket were heading in that direction, I'm sure the range safety people would blow it up well in advance. They already experienced the worse case ground scenario (a fully fueled F9 going "boom"), and according to some folks I talked to, there wasn't a whole lot of damage apart from the pad. I mean, it (literally) shook them up, but the damages were mostly limited to pictures falling off the wall, car alarms going off in the parking lot, sensitive instruments needing to be re-calibrated; that kind of thing. (The pad, on the other hand, did not look good. I'd post a picture, but there are "no photography" signs up around LC-40).

          There's some small support buildings in the area, and a tourist gantry about a mile from the pad, but none of those seem even remotely expensive to replace. I can't imagine that the launch pad itself is that expensive.

          What's weirder to me is that this is an FAA requirement, not a NASA or USAF requirement. So it's not clear to me that moving to another launch facility would offer relief.

          I'm sure the FAA has their reasons, they're just not apparent to me.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:34PM (3 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:34PM (#479517)

        Something to think about is my commercial general liability is a couple hundred bucks per million per year. Of course I'm not launching rockets, but then again I'm getting coverage for a year not one launch.

        I wonder if the budget for CGL for spacex is higher or lower than the catering budget for launch day.

        I can assure you a couple dozen guys at a SOFTWARE launch party can spend a couple hundred on catering real quickly.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:48PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:48PM (#479526)

          What are your business's odds of blowing up the place and spreading hydrazine (or related) around, to the tune of $63M in repairs?

          Many satellites are not even insured because the probabilities vs cost make the premiums just plain absurd...

        • (Score: 2, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:49PM

          by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:49PM (#479527)

          The catering costs for a launch are pretty high [youtube.com]...

          --
          "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:50PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:50PM (#479529)

          Back-of-the-envelope calculation: Each launch has a 3% chance of blowing up on the pad (1 out of 30 has blown up). The damage might be 20 million on average (63 million max). So cost could be $600,000 per launch. That's not peanuts. But maybe average damage is lower. Does anyone know how much the recent accident cost the US gov? I'm guessing that the old $13 million coverage was not enough.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:56PM (6 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:56PM (#479577) Journal

        One would hope that they'll make their launches reliable enough to drop the insurance premiums, long before they'd amortize the hundreds of millions it costs to setup a new launch site.

        They already are building a launch site [wikipedia.org] in Brownsville, Texas. Cost was estimated to be $85-100 million, but they apparently have soil stability problems at the site which might drive up that cost some. First launch is currently planned for the year 2018.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:52PM (1 child)

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:52PM (#479600)

          Geeze, looking at the sat pictures, it's hard to believe they'd have soil issues /s

          26 degrees N ain't bad compared to KSC, but maybe he should ask Puerto Rico for some land in exchange for statehood support.
          Or just politely ask the French for some Kourou space.

          Can you take off from Texas and land the booster in KSC?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:41PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:41PM (#479990) Journal

            Can you take off from Texas and land the booster in KSC?

            Yes, they can feasibly land the first stage booster in Kennedy Space Center (or the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Base just to the south). But I suspect it'll be a while before they are allowed to do anything like that.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:57PM (3 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:57PM (#479601)

          Forgot to ask: How do they reconcile the usual launch No-Go zones with being less than 2km from the Mexican border?

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:41PM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:41PM (#479611) Journal

            Forgot to ask: How do they reconcile the usual launch No-Go zones with being less than 2km from the Mexican border?

            That would be another no-go zone. They would also be launching towards the Gulf of Mexico. If the rocket drifts more than 2 km off course, they'll abort the launch, which would destroy the rocket in mid air, though these days, the payload could be saved with a launch abort system (LAS). At that point, the harm is from debris and the LAS payload dropping on whatever is underneath.

            There are some spectacularly bad failure modes such as tipping over early in the launch and veering into a populated area before the rocket can be aborted, but the US hasn't had a failure that bad on any orbital rocket in a long while. Blowing up on or just above the launch pad is a more likely failure (which has happened twice in the US in the past decade).

            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:59PM

              by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:59PM (#479616)

              > That would be another no-go zone.

              That's kind of my question though. I'm pretty sure the exclusion zones around the Cape are somewhere between 3km and tens of km.
              I don't see Mister Wall negotiating with the Mexicans to forbid them from their own airspace.

              It's also well within range of 0.50 cal... Wouldn't want to piss off the cartels.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:47PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:47PM (#479774)

              One problem is if the rocket tips over and blows, there is a chance that it would blow a hole open in The Wall, and the hoards of illegal "bad dudes" would come flooding through.

              Little known fact: The Great Wall of China wasn't a military defensive construction, it was to keep out all the illegal Mongol aliens from taking all the rural peasant Chinese jobs.

    • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:47PM

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:47PM (#479523)

      I thought SpaceX was planning to build their own launch facility on the gulf coast in Texas.

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:28PM (#479542)

      More than likely they had to pay out for other claims. Hence the higher plan.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:29PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:29PM (#479515)

    But at this point it isn't clear what specifically prompted imposition of higher liability coverage on Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos-6#Destruction [wikipedia.org]

    Although flights in January and February went fine. Maybe a miscommunication and the Jan/Feb insurance was also upped?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:53PM (#479532)

    Do they actually have to buy a policy, or do they have enough assets to self-insure.

    Which could make this just a piece of paperwork reserving funds they already have.

    Of course, if they have the funds and still choose to insure externally, then this may say something of their assessment of the risks.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:39PM

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:39PM (#479565)

      I suspect the problem with self-insurance is that it ties up capital.

      Since not everybody is going to have a serious incident, people/businesses can pool their money with insurance. Each insured entity frees up some capital to do other things, while increasing their regular expenses as a trade-off.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:36PM (#479562)

    ...they can apply for a hardship waiver. If they don't qualify for the waiver, they face a tax penalty. The penalty is a percentage of their total household adjusted gross income or a flat rate, whichever is greater. Each year, the penalty will increase to keep pace with inflation and to encourage them to buy coverage.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:21AM (#479617)

      (more info at healthcare.gov)

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