Insuring NewSpace

In today's modern societies, certainly in the United States, no business of any scale operates without insurance. Of course, all businesses are not equal in the eyes of insurance companies. Space tourism companies will be looked at very carefully.

At the FAA's latest annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference, experts warned the pressure will really be on the first few flights. To start, insurance policies will be extremely expensive for space tourism companies. That's probably not shocking to anyone. If there are failures early on, the industry might not be able to get insurance at all. That could easily delay at least commercial human spaceflight for a generation. However, if the first 10 to 15 flights across the industry go off without a hitch, or if the first three flights of a given company go smoothly, insurance rates could drop quickly.

Of course, if the companies involved can't go three, or ten, or fifteen flights without incident, they'll have more to worry about than insurance. The space tourism industry will only be viable if people who want to fly can be reasonably confident they'll get home in one healthy piece. Proving that to insurers seems to be no harder than proving it to the general public, which is good news for NewSpace.