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> Among the Dragon's cargo was a freezer that will be used to store scientific samples. For the ride up, SpaceX stashed chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream inside.

Just awesome.

The mission was a success. The satellite maker's loss was covered with insurance money, the ISS stays up in the sky, engine-out capability proven, subsequent launch contracts remain in place from both NASA/the satellite maker - and the ISS astronauts get home-made chocolate ice cream! Win-win-win.

The only entity that got screwed was the insurance company, but that was a risk they were willing to take and were duly paid for doing so.

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The primary mission was a success. The secondary mission was a failure. $10 million probably covers Orbcomm's launch costs.

SpaceX is awesome, but this isn't an unqualified win. There are groups out for SpaceX's head and they will try (unsuccessfully, I hope) to use this "engine incident" against them. SpaceX did not want this to happen at all.

They shure didn't want this to happen but they also demonstrated they were able to manage engine failure. That's worth something for the future.

What groups? I haven't heard of any opposition to SpaceX. Heck, NASA contracts with them.

http://news.yahoo.com/spacexs-elon-musk-bemoans-opposition-c... talks a bit about it some.

SpaceX is dramatically lowering the cost of space launch. They are eating the lunch of dinosaur space companies who are only too happy to apply FUD that SpaceX is being "too cheap." There's a lot of money on the table being consumed by people who just have to keep on doing what they are doing and don't like competition.

And I bet the insurance company will make the money back over time on subsequent successful launches (among other insured activities).

Yes, because guess what? I think the premiums just went up a bit!

Yes, the actuarial problem here is actually quite interesting, because one question it must address is the probability of failure. I wonder how much insight the insurers were given into safety margins on the spacecraft?

[Edit: OK, a link on spacecraft actuarial methods: http://www.casact.org/pubs/forum/00fforum/00ff047.pdf]

Haha, the 7% historic rate of satellites that failed to launch is not very far from my experience with the USPS' failed deliveries of postal packages to Australia.

Thanks for that.

I don't suppose you have other links to catastrophic risk insurance papers that are relatively interesting. I've always been interested in the industry from a far.

A 15 Minute Call could save you 15 percent or more on ..... naaah doesnt work with the Satellite.

"The only entity that got screwed was the insurance company,"

Unlikely they got screwed over. Insurance money doesn't come out of thin air. Insurance companies charge a premium for coverage and that premium usually goes up after a coverage event to make up for the increased risk. Insurance companies very rarely get screwed over.

I like how they had a little party to celebrate getting ice cream, but I'm wondering, how much did that ice cream cost to bring to space? I think it's about $10,000 to launch a pound of something into space.

At earth parties, $10,000 gets you a lot of drugs/alcohol. At space parties, it gets you a tub of ice cream.

  > At earth parties, $10,000 gets you a lot of drugs/alcohol. At space parties, it gets you a tub of ice cream.

Which you get to eat in space.

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