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Insurance is a big part of space travel. That’s not really surprising, considering how much money is tied up in launching satellites, and how many things can potentially go wrong. It’s not an easy job though, being an insurance underwriter in the commercial space business, because technology changes pretty quickly, at least if you work with SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s space travel company is working hard to transition to reusable rockets, which would allow them to reduce the cost of their launches even more. They’ve had success retrieving first stage rockets, but they’re still working out the details of refurbishing those parts for use in subsequent launches. According to the company, they might be able to reduce costs by as much as 30% just from reusing rockets, and they’ve got some other tricks up their sleeve, like ramping up production, which would lower costs.
But as SpaceX is moving forward with these changes, they’re doing lots of work on their rockets and it’s sometimes hard for people outside of the company to keep up with what, exactly, is changing. That’s the hard part for underwriters, as they don’t want policies to remain unchanged when the rockets themselves are changing constantly. Other space travel providers, like Arianespace in France, or International Launch Services, which uses Russian Proton rockets, haven’t been pushing their designs as hard. In fact, the Ariane 5 rocket hasn’t changed in 16 years, since the last time it failed. That might seem weird from a technology point of view, but it makes things easier for underwriters.
Keeping down insurance costs is another way that SpaceX can help reduce launch costs, but doing so will likely require them to settle on a design long enough to explain it to underwriters and convince them to cover the rockets with more generous policies.