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Life Insurance Restrictions For Space Tourists

Posted by Soulskill on from the lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-uninsured dept.

RockDoctor writes: Reuters reports that there are changes afoot for life insurance contracts, which will require additional premiums for "space tourists." While not likely to be a disabling issue for the industry — the statistics for astronauts dying in flight are not that bad — it is an issue that people considering such a jaunt will need to address. Obviously this has been brought to the fore by the unfortunate crash of the Virgin Galactic craft under test. Relatedly, an article at IEEE Spectrum explains why SpaceShipTwo's rocket fuel wasn't the cause of the accident.

2 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Quick tell the OP this applies to Skydiving too... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Quick tell the OP this usually applies to skydiving too. (Check your policy - it might be explictly listed, or just covered under a general "if you die while engaging in a risk sport you're SOL" clause.)

  2. impossible by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Insurance companies need a giant base of numbers to determine probability. When they don't, you get month-after-ACA type prices. Humana had no idea what would happen when they picked up 10 million very unhealthy people under the ACA plan so all ACA plans were about 4x the price of my identical non-ACA compliant plan. So in other words, when insurance companies gamble on something without enough data, they guess. When they guess, the price skyrockets.