INSURE ME TO THE MOON.

• Author: Riggs, Mike
• Position: ECONOMICS

IN PLACE OF life insurance, the astronauts who landed on the moon left behind autographed envelope covers that their loved ones could sell if they died in space. Half a century later, the so-called Apollo insurance covers produced for missions 11 through 16 are coveted collector's items, and actual liability insurance for space travel is a product slowly coming into its own.

Insuring space technology is now close to standard. In 2019, The Aerospace Corporation researchers Lindsay Chaney and Nicholas Hirano noted that in the prior year "roughly two-thirds of launched satellites globally carried some form of insurance." But insuring private space travelers is as new as, well, private space travel.

The American travel insurance company Battleface began offering space travel insurance underwritten by Lloyd's of London in 2021. Some of the policy criteria described by Battleface co-founder and CEO Sasha Gainullin, such as age and health status, are insurance boilerplate. Others are far more specific: "distance into space, the duration of the flight, and what type of space craft will be used."

In some ways, buying insurance for space travel is no different from buying a specific policy for other high-risk activities. You pay more because you're risking more. But as Gainullin notes, "Earth-based adventure activities have a known risk frequency, amassed by the millions of thrill seekers who have taken part and the small percentage who have, unfortunately, been injured or worse. Those statistics are not yet available for such a new risk."

Space travel insurance premiums will eventually reflect...