Satellite Owner Says SpaceX Owes $50 Million Or Free Flight (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Israel's Space Communication Ltd said on Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from Elon Musk's SpaceX after a Spacecom communications satellite was destroyed last week by an explosion at SpaceX's Florida launch site. Officials of the Israeli company said in a conference call with reporters Sunday that Spacecom also could collect $205 million from Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the AMOS-6 satellite. Spacecom has been hit hard in the aftermath of the Thursday explosion that destroyed the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its payload. The Israeli company said the loss of the satellite would have a significant impact, with its equity expected to decline by $30 million to $123 million. Spacecom shares dropped 9 percent on Thursday, with the explosion occurring late in the last trading day of the week. Trading in the shares was suspended on Sunday morning, and the stock plummeted another 34 percent when trading resumed. In a conference call with reporters, Spacecom's general counsel Gil Lotan said it was too early to say if the company's planned merger with Beijing Xinwei Technology Group would proceed. Xinwei last month agreed to buy Spacecom for $285 million, saying the deal was contingent on the successful launch and operation of Spacecom's AMOS-6 satellite. The $200 million AMOS-6 satellite that perished in the explosion belonged to Facebook and was going to be used to beam internet to developing parts of the world.

Comments

Re: Don't put your one egg

[bluefoxlucid]

If you're self-insuring, the funds you set aside can sit in a 1% market fund and collect interest, or in a longer-term fund with bigger payouts. In general, you'll have liquid capital and such investments; if you have a risk event and tap your liquid capital, then you stop putting profits into your investment accounts and top your liquid capital back up. You might need to take a short-term loan and wait 6 months so you can pull money out of your investments--lose an extra 0.5%, pay it back with money that's grown by 11% over the past several years.