Rideshare launch
A launch grouping dozens of satellites from unrelated owners, concentrating independent insured interests on a single event.
February 15, 2017: an Indian PSLV puts 104 satellites into orbit in a single shot, 88 of them Planet Doves. A rideshare launch carries dozens of satellites belonging to unrelated operators on a single vehicle. Each pays by the kilogram for a slot on a standardized mission profile it does not choose. The practice has cut the cost of reaching orbit by an order of magnitude for small satellites, and it has become the normal route to space for start-ups and laboratories. For insurance it inverts an implicit assumption of the class. A launch historically carried a single interest of known value. A shared flight carries dozens of distinct interests, priced by different insurers, none of whom knows the total value exposed to the same event. A launcher failure then produces an accumulation invisible in any one portfolio, exactly the mechanism cyber underwriting learned to name elsewhere. A sequencing difficulty adds to it: with staged deployment, some passengers are separated and others are not when a late failure occurs, and loss characterizations multiply for a single flight.
The SpaceX Transporter-1 flight, launched on January 24, 2021, placed 143 spacecraft belonging to dozens of different operators into orbit, then a record for satellites deployed by a single launch.
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