Is the lower cost of insurance an artifact of the depreciated value of the booster?
That’s interesting because I would assume a reused structure (rather then reused design) would be at greater risk for failure. More fatigue cycles etc.
I believe in the case of govt payloads they are self insured to around 80% or so but that’s obviously a different case. I also wonder if that affects the business plan for how to decide which payloads go on which rocket
There is basically a curve from where its more risk in the early launches and then gets better, as it nears end of live, risk goes up again.
I’d like to be at or near the first flight of a new plane using a time-tested design.
Failure rates (more specifically hazard rates) in most components tend to increase with time (I.e., follow a time-dependent failure model like a Weibull distribution and not a constant rate model). The “bathtub” curve is usually more associated with components with a constant failure rate (where the ideal place is after infant mortality but before wear out).
There are two types of uncertainties here and I think we’re talking about different ones. One is a design uncertainty that can be mitigated using a well-used and understood design. The other is a component failure uncertainty which increases as service life increases. So the ideal place to be is in a well-vetted design with new-ish components.
This is the actuaries factoring in what they see as less risk.