The following is a transcript from a keynote address from Relm CEO and Founder, Joseph Ziolkowski, delivered at Relm’s 2025 Space Insurance Symposium in partnership with Space-Comm Expo.
Before we get started, I just wanted to kind of set the stage for the underlying theme of today’s panels. They deal with the means by which we handle risk in the new space economy, right?
What if I told you that the biggest risk to the future of space exploration wasn’t technological or geopolitical or, or even funding based?
It’s something that’s, I would say, far less glamorous, often overlooked, but absolutely essential. It’s the idea of risk transfer.
If you think about every major innovation or breakthrough that’s happened in space or will happen in space, whether it’s commercial satellites or lunar mining, it hinges on one critical question: what happens when something goes wrong?
Who bears the cost? Who will ensure that the space innovators and visionaries in this room can continue pushing boundaries without being financially crushed by the inevitable risks of space exploration?
A lot of people don’t know or appreciate this, but insurance been the invisible force behind human progress.
It’s a dramatic statement, but it’s true. From the age of discovery to the rise of aviation to the dot com boom.
But if we’re honest with ourselves and we consider the state of insurance relative to the state of the new space economy, we are behind. Risks are emerging and evolving faster than we can understand and insure them.
Whether it’s collision debris or space piracy or geopolitical tensions or AI automation. These things are not just elements of science fiction, they are million-dollar and potentially billion-dollar liabilities that are waiting to happen.
If we’re serious about the future of space, we have to be just as serious about the resilience of space. And that means we need to rethink about risk.
We need to reconsider the insurance products and coverages that exist in the market. We need to ask ourselves how we plan to protect the people who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. And we need to ask ourselves, ‘how do we become part of the solution?’
Fortunately, that’s going to be the gist of what we’re going to be discussing here today.
We’ve got three great panels that will help us, you know, arrive at this conclusion, hopefully of how we can all be here for both a good time and a long time.
Panel One will speak to securing low Earth orbit. Exploring whether old space insurance policies for large GeoSats can be evolved for small and middle market companies operating in low Earth orbit.
Panel two speaks to sustaining space operations and the future of space exploration, dealing with topics like space debris and other aspects that are compromising our ability to exist in space for longer durations.
And then panel three, one that really gets my gears turning is looking further down the road at how we need to be thinking and planning for risks arising from private space stations, lunar and deep space exploration, and asteroid mining.
Ultimately, I think what we need to consider for today is the collaboration required for the insurance market to move and evolve in a way that’s going to be supportive of the innovation that is already happening, and, we know, is forthcoming.
I think it also requires a recognition that the solutions that the operators and innovators in space need to build resilience and sustainability behind their operations — they don’t exist today.
The risk models, the products from an insurance standpoint, the safety nets.
It’s going to require collaboration between operators and insurers to put us on a path toward relevance and ultimate sustainability in support of the companies doing the types of things that we genuinely want to support.
So here’s my challenge to you: let’s stop thinking about insurance as an afterthought and begin thinking about insurance as the infrastructure to provide for the sustainability of space exploration going forward.
The future of space is not just about pioneering and reaching new frontiers, but making sure we can go back and do it time and time again.
So with that said I want to thank you all for giving us your time today and beginning the collaboration that’s going to be required for some great stuff to come.
Thanks so much.
