Unusually clear and detailed article from Reuters. Kudos to Ms. Klotz.
Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
41–50 of 111 posts
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#42> Among the Dragon's cargo was a freezer that will be used to store scientific samples. For the ride up, SpaceX stashed chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream inside. Just awesome. The mission was a success. The satellite maker's loss was covered with insurance money, the ISS stays up in the sky, engine-out capability proven, subsequent launch contracts remain in place from both NASA/the satellite maker - and the ISS astr…
And I bet the insurance company will make the money back over time on subsequent successful launches (among other insured activities).
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without knowledge of their premiums, it's difficult to judge what sort of deal it was.
If the mission had succeeded, they would've been able to test it a little longer and then received 0 money back. Early test termination yields $10 mil. Either way they're still paying the premiums. I have a feeling, though, that the premiums will be going up after this.
If they have a policy at all going forward. I'm actually very curious which insurance company wrote up a policy like this and what the structure looks like (not that we'll be able to get access to that info, but still..)
There are very few insurance carriers on earth that write "specialized risk" like this -- it was most likely one of very few large multinational carriers or, more likely, a Lloyd's syndicate.
The problem is that these very same carriers are, somewhat ironically, exceedingly risk-averse. They pat themselves on the backs and tell each other how smart they are when their bets go well ("Ha! We got $2M in premium for that satellite launch and didn't have to pay out a penny") and they are very quick to play Monday Morning Quarterback when their bets go wrong, especially when it's the first launch ("Johnson, you are a foolish underwriter. How could you write that risk? Get off the risk immediately.")
As frustrating as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if they either cancelled the policy (if the policy covered multiple launches) or non-renewed after this failure and claim the risk profile changed or something like that.
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#44It is perfectly clear that this is a story of safety margines adhered to in an admirably strict fashion; not allowing short term thinking rule over long term; and certainly not allowing marketing rule over engineering. This is how you move mountains.
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Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#45> Among the Dragon's cargo was a freezer that will be used to store scientific samples. For the ride up, SpaceX stashed chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream inside. Just awesome. The mission was a success. The satellite maker's loss was covered with insurance money, the ISS stays up in the sky, engine-out capability proven, subsequent launch contracts remain in place from both NASA/the satellite maker - and the ISS astr…
And I bet the insurance company will make the money back over time on subsequent successful launches (among other insured activities).
Yes, because guess what? I think the premiums just went up a bit!
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. They were hoping the F9 upper stage would do that orbit raising for them (the non-risky version). The risky part was trying to do an orbit raising with the satellite's onboard fuel, which was the only option after the F9 lost an engine. The expected outcome (F9 upper stage doing the raising) was considered non-risky, and I'm sure that's the premise the insurance company was operating under when they agreed to…
No, the risky part was trying to raise the orbit using the F9 upper stage after it had burned more fuel than expected due to the failed engine. Quoth the article: > Falcon 9 had enough kerosene fuel left over to relight the engine, but the amount of liquid oxygen "was only enough to achieve a roughly 95 percent likelihood of completing the second burn, so Falcon 9 did not attempt a restart," I doubt many satellites h…
You're right. I remember them discussing attempting to raise the orbit with onboard fuel, but I doubt that was possible.
My point was more that, prior to the engine failure, raising the orbit with the second stage was considered non-risky. You're correct that after the failure, raising the orbit with the second stage was risky.
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably mostly a theoretical risk. On the other hand, I recall a flight to Mir that ended up slamming into the station. And NASA doesn't have any reason to accept a risk that doesn't benefit its operations.
> And NASA doesn't have any reason to accept a risk that doesn't benefit its operations. Goodwill in the space community and helping to defray costs of future launches by making commercial launches more successful (and thus less expensive, if only for insurance purposes) seem like things that benefit their operations. Perhaps this is a naive opinion, though.
I agree, and I think NASA does too. They're just really conservative about the safety of the ISS (understandably so).
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I bet the insurance company will make the money back over time on subsequent successful launches (among other insured activities).
Yes, because guess what? I think the premiums just went up a bit!
Yes, the actuarial problem here is actually quite interesting, because one question it must address is the probability of failure. I wonder how much insight the insurers were given into safety margins on the spacecraft?
[Edit: OK, a link on spacecraft actuarial methods: http://www.casact.org/pubs/forum/00fforum/00ff047.pdf]
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#49It is perfectly clear that this is a story of safety margines adhered to in an admirably strict fashion; not allowing short term thinking rule over long term; and certainly not allowing marketing rule over engineering. This is how you move mountains.
Huh? Do you work in their PR or something?
Re: Satellite burns up following SpaceX rocket glitch
#50I never understood why this company couldn't make do with the orbit spacex left it in?
No, orbit isn't orbit. Among many other considerations, the key problem here was that the initial orbit was low enough for atmospheric drag to be a factor, thus why it fell back to Earth after just a few days.
And specifically, being underpowered, the orbit was probably highly elliptical.