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If there had been a catastrophe that called the whole program into question, NASA might have ceased to exist. Those with authority to pay out would have lost th
by sowbug 3y ago
If there had been a catastrophe that called the whole program into question, NASA might have ceased to exist. Those with authority to pay out would have lost their power, and budgeted money would have vanished. These astronauts surely hoped they'd be among the first of many to explore space, but in that moment it was still possible they'd merely be the last of few.
I know very little about 1960s American culture, so I don't know how well something like GoFundMe would have played back then. If the income-earning person in a family were incapacitated, was the societal expectation that the family should henceforth be taken care of by others? Or rather that the family identify a new income-earning person?
- pyuser583 3y agoThe insurance policy would be made with an insurance company by the employer. NASA being dissolved wouldn’t affect the payout. In the 1960s insurance companies loved offering life insurance policies to federal employees. Federal employees were young, well educated, and in good enough health to work. These policies excluded extremely dangerous activities (like going to war).
- generalizations 3y ago> These policies excluded extremely dangerous activities (like going to war). Or possibly, climbing into a rocket?
- mandevil 3y agoEven going to war involved a huge mass of people, which made it easier to get statistical safety for the insurance company. For writing insurance the fact that just 24 people ever (even to this day!) have left Earth orbit meant that the risk pool just wasn't very large. Very small group and large, unknown risk- that's the sort of thing that an actuary really doesn't like working with. Like, if Apollo 13 didn't make it home, that's 1/8th of the total insurance population right there. What kind of price do you need to charge to cover that level of risk?
- pyuser583 3y agoActuaries could assume 100% death rate per astronaut per launch, and the large number of non-astronaut employees and small number of launches would lower the premiums a lot.
- dotancohen 3y agoThat was probably the calculation... and the reason for not insuring them.
- sowbug 3y agoYou might be replying to a different thread. We were discussing an extraordinary circumstance in which the government might "take care of the families of dead Apollo 11 astronauts" to make up for the space-exploration exclusion in the insurance that NASA actually offered. In other words, we know for a fact that there was no insurance.