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It's very easy to address even if you assume 5.5% failure rate will remain constant and not decline Space X is still significantly cheaper.
by qaq 11y ago
It's very easy to address even if you assume 5.5% failure rate will remain constant and not decline Space X is still significantly cheaper.
- hackuser 11y agoIt depends on the costs of the payloads.
- sounds 11y agoLaunch insurance is also included, and for a very good reason.
- hackuser 11y agoIt's included in SpaceX's/ULA's/whoever's bid? Insurance doesn't reduce the costs of (whatever event you're insuring), it just evens them out. Instead of paying for (e.g.) 1 failure every 25 launches, you pay for 0.04 failures on every launch (plus the insurance company's profit). So the payloads' costs still apply.
- maaku 11y agoFor the price differential we're talking about, it works out in the customer's benefit.
- Mvandenbergh 11y agoI don't think government buys launch insurance and if they do, they shouldn't.
- jessriedel 11y agoEven if an entity is large enough to self-insure, it can make sense to buy insurance if you don't have the internal capacity to estimate the risk accurately. Yes, it might be better to simply hire the risk assessors from the insurance company, but there might be incentive issues. It can also help for external transparency: If the project fails and is self-insured, then people can question whether the risk assessment was correct.
- qaq 11y agoSure does but avg payload cost would need to be 990,000,000 for it to no longer hold true.
- neurotech1 11y agoThe NRO sometimes has a spare satellite in production, so if one failed somehow, the replacement could be ready relatively quickly, if it was vital to national security. The NRO has transferred surplus hardware to NASA for science missions. Google Terra Bella (aka Skybox) uses SmallSat (~100 Kg) imaging satellites, and the NRO could use a similar for priority uses where a launch failure wouldn't be as painful as loosing a $1Bn spy satellite. A SmallSat wouldn't be as capable as the larger ones, but has advantages. The purpose of the EELV program is more about assured access to launch vehicles to get to space, than individual missions being near 100% success.