Dave Mosher, Business Insider US 8/29/2019
The FAA made SpaceX boost its accident insurance 33-fold, to $100 million, before Starhopper’s last launch. Here’s why.
SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Starhopper rocket-ship prototype in South Texas on Tuesday, a key step in the company’s quest to reach Mars.
Before Starhopper’s final flight, though, the Federal Aviation Administration asked for “more hazard analysis†– likely because the launch site is near a small hamlet called Boca Chica Village.
The US regulator required SpaceX to boost its liability insurance coverage from $3 million to $100 million after the analysis.
The jump likely came from a higher, more fueled-up, and slightly riskier launch profile – plus SpaceX fans coming to the area to witness the launch.
On Tuesday evening, SpaceX launched its Starhopper rocket ship about 492 feet (150 meters) into the South Texas skies atop a cloud of smoke and dust – and $100 million worth of liability insurance.
That’s according to an updated launch license for the vehicle issued on August 23 by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates US aerospace activities.
There’s always a risk a rocket may explode during its launch, and that risk is higher for experimental vehicles like Starhopper, which SpaceX built as a test bed for its new Raptor rocket engine design. (Dozens of the engines will power a far larger launch system called Starship, which is being designed for journeys to the moon and Mars.)
Elon Musk, the company’s founder, is familiar with such eventualities. Back in 2017, Musk even shared a supercut video of every explosive mistake (what he’s jokingly described as a “rapid unscheduled disassemblyâ€) in SpaceX’s development of reusable rockets.
But $100 million in accident coverage was 33 times higher than what the FAA required SpaceX to have for Starhopper’s launch just a month earlier. For that flight on July 25, the license mandated least $3 million in coverage.
Why the mandatory boost in coverage? As with all things in rocket science, it’s complicated.
More:
https://www.businessinsider.sg/spacex-starhopper-rocket-launch-liability-insurance-faa-mandate-2019-8/
