The SpaceX accident is a blow to Musk’s firm because of immediate financial costs, and also since it may delay future launches, said Elson. “This was an unusual loss that we’ve seen for SpaceX,” he said. “Launches over the last 50 years have frequently gone wrong, but we’ve seen very few rockets blow up during routine pre-launch operations.” An explosion occurring pre-launch is an extremely rare event, agreed Teal Group’s Marco Caceres, an analyst of space studies.
The failure is also a setback for insurers that rose to the occasion to provide coverage, said Elson. There’s a handful of specialized firms that offer pre-launch policies, with a firm named Pembroke leading the market, according to Elson. Pembroke is affiliated with Ironshore Inc., a firm founded by ex-AIG executives which filed for an initial public offering in the U.S.
Aon Plc, the second largest insurance broker by market value, counts SpaceX as a client and said in June that insurers have given Falcon 9 a “tremendous amount of support.” A representative of the London-based firm declined to comment on Thursday’s explosion.Mark Zuckerberg is not amused
It’s the second loss of a spacecraft by Musk’s firm in a little more than a year. The satellite was meant to beam Internet service to sub-Saharan Africa, in conjunction with Facebook Inc. and Eutelsat to connect people in remote parts of the world. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in an online post that he’s “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.”
Musk’s Hawthorne, California-based company has shaken up the space industry by introducing cost competition and successfully landing rocket boosters to be reused. It has won contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and crew to the International Space Station and agreements with commercial satellite companies to send satellites into orbit.
SpaceX has scheduled more than 70 launches, representing $10 billion in contracts. Saturday’s launch was to be the ninth of the year for the company, which had settled into a steady tempo of flights following a June 2015 accident that grounded its rockets for six months. That failure was linked to a two-foot-long, inch-thick strut that snapped in a liquid oxygen tank. The latest “anomaly occurred during propellant loading of the first and second stages,” SpaceX said in a statement, adding that no one was injured. “We are continuing to review the data to identify the root cause.”
—With assistance from Dana Hull and Julie Johnsson.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.