Insurance provider battlefront has announced the launch of travel insurance coverage for space tourists.
The new policy is a customized offer with benefits available including accidental death and permanent dismemberment. Underwritten by certain underwriters at Lloyd’s, the policy can be valid for space flights operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and others.
“We are proud to be providing this pioneering product for space tourism,” said Sasha Gainullin, CEO of battleface. “We regularly revisit our policies to ensure we are relevant to today’s marketplace, and while space tourism is still in its infancy, several hundred space flights have been sold to civilians, and demand is growing. This type of product fits with our values of providing people with the confidence to fulfil their dreams.”
Lloyd’s already has an insurance product for the emerging private spaceflight sector, and a space consortium from which it has developed scalable insurance for all aspects of the space travel sector. According to a Lloyd’s report, it is anticipated that the private spaceflight industry will be worth $1 trillion by 2040.
“Today’s landscape mirrors the early days of air travel back at the beginning of the last century,” Gainullin said. “With the advent of more affordable space travel, costs should come down as demand rises alongside the need for insurance. The first policy for aviation was written in 1911, and in 1927 the first transatlantic flight flown by Charles Lindbergh was insured. We are excited to be one of the first companies in 2021 to be providing insurance to space tourism pioneers who want to have the freedom to travel into space.”
