Item — HN Reader

Makes me think of the Apollo insurance covers:

"The Apollo insurance covers are autographed postal covers signed by the astronaut crews prior to their mission. The primary motivation behind this action was the refusal of life insurance companies to provide coverage for the astronauts. Consequently, the astronauts devised a strategy involving the signing of hundreds of postal covers. These were to be left behind for their families, who could then sell them in the event of the astronauts' deaths.[1] The insurance covers began with Apollo 11 and ended with Apollo 16."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_insurance_covers

1 comments

A country that sends men to the Moon but isn't able to guarantee the wellbeing of their families shouldn't be able to send men to the Moon.

It wasn't that they didn't have life insurance at all. It was that they couldn't increase their life insurance on the private market either due to their line of work or "Act of God"-style clauses. Or at least they thought that to be the case. This is similar to how some life insurance policies exclude death while acting as a pilot in general aviation.

AFAIK all of them were former military and obviously current government employees so their families would have been entitled to any military life insurance they purchased as well as any pension benefits due (military and federal civilian). I can't give you the exact amounts because it has changed over the years and also depends on how many years of military and/or civilian service you had.

But generally all government employees covered under the retirement plan have an annuity or monthly survivor benefit available that is some portion of their final salary at death or their average salary whichever was higher. Often there is a fixed adder as well (basic death benefit adder right now is $41,000 per year so your spouse would get 50% of your final salary plus $41k).

In addition the federal plan (and social security) pays monthly for surviving children until they reach age 18. The federal plan is a bit nicer in that it pays until 18 or 22 if you are a full time student. Both pay for life if the child is disabled (though the government definition of disabled is rather strict).

All of this is just survivor benefits. Once your surviving spouse retires they are entitled to the pension payments you would have received.

an interesting implication of this is that the government probably didn't want to issue them life insurance because then they would have to explain why they don't do that for all military personnel

The US government does issue life insurance for all military personnel. It's a nominal cost (20 bucks a month IIRC) for something like 400k of coverage. It's been around since 1914[1].

As far as I know all of the astronauts were military at that time, so they probably would have been covered by this program. There could be any number of nuances I'm not aware of though.

[1]https://benefits.va.gov/benefits/infographics/pdfs/timeline_...

I don't know about any of the other Apollo astronauts, and I wasn't around at the time, but I do remember once reading that a big deal was made about Neil Armstrong being a civilian when he landed on the moon.

Wikipedia at least says you're right -- he was a Naval Aviator and test pilot, but must have left the service when he went to NASA.

When I was in we had life insurance. Before every deployment they had lawyers come in and walk us through creating a will, explaining the benefit, etc.