Originally Posted by
FlyJSH
Oh, and to give another insurance perspective, Lloyds of London insured at least the early Space Shuttle missions. The rate was roughly equal to a third the cost of a launch. In other words, Lloyds figured to break even if one flight out of three crashed. Considering that there were 135 missions of which 133 were successful, they probably made a ton of money.
This is typical of when insurance companies (who live and die on actuarial table statistics) have to insure something they don't understand. Actually they don't *have* to insure anything like this at all, but if they do it will be at a vast premium... until they have some long-term data.
Another of several real-world hurdles.