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> The story so far has been that SpaceX will go public to raise the money to get to Mars The idea of SpaceX being public makes me very nervous about the future
by thearn4 12y ago
> The story so far has been that SpaceX will go public to raise the money to get to Mars
The idea of SpaceX being public makes me very nervous about the future of commercial space (though I really, really want them to succeed). Think back to when NASA lost people (Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia) - these were seen as huge national tragedies followed by years of public scrutiny and gov't inquiry. But work pushed on, because their funding and momentum to continue with operations was decoupled from these reactions.
Now, imagine the first time SpaceX loses a human. If they are public, that could kill the entire company right there. Stock traders are not rational actors.
- thematt 12y agoThere will be significant launch insurance contracts written to protect the company against such a scenario.
- notahacker 12y agoDrawing up those insurance contracts is a non-trivial endeavour too. There are specialist space divisions of major insurers who can package up space reinsurance as a nice investment whose returns are uncorrelated with market returns, but they're already in a situation where in years where one launch incident involving a sufficiently expensive satellite payload can wipe out the profits for the whole space insurance industry in a year. They make it back in future years because of the continuing demand for satellite launches. Now imagine there are people on board, the rocket is headed to colonise Mars and the CEO is on board. Not all of that risk to the future of private sector space industry as a whole is insurable.