Rocky Jones wrote:
Launch insurance...
I could be wrong but I think that Phase 3A had an insurance policy (if memory serves)...the Ariane IV went Bang...
do I recall this correctly?
To my knowledge it was P3-B (OSCAR-10) with Ariane-1 L06. And yes, they had to pay some money because P3-B was bumped by the last rocket stage and did not get it to the planned orbit....
But forget it... in the early days it was still expensive, but not comparable what you nowadays have to pay for such insurance. However, some launch providers (like Arianespace) will give you now a free launch in case the launcher failed...
73s Peter DB2OS
BTW:* SpaceX updated its launch manifest. Most notably, the NASA COTS missions are moved down the list.*
ATSB (Malaysia) Q3 2008* Falcon 1 Kwajalein
US Government Q4 2008* Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
MDA Corp. (Canada) 2009 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
Avanti Communications (UK) 2009 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
NASA COTS – Demo 1 2009 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
NASA COTS – Demo 2 2009 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
SpaceDev 2009 Falcon 1 Kwajalein
NASA COTS – Demo 3 2010 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral
MDA Corp. (Canada) 2010 Falcon 1 Kwajalein
Swedish Space Corp. (Sweden) 2010 Falcon 1 Kwajalein
Bigelow Aerospace 2011 Falcon 9 Cape Canaveral