Did you know that the Government doesn't insure the cargo it sends into space? That means that when a satellite carrying government cargo explodes during or after launch, taxpayers are left footing the entire bill. This issue has become topical with the recent loss of a Northrop Grumman satellite launched by Elon Musk's privately-owned company SpaceX earlier this month. Shooting a satellite into orbit is obviously inherently risky; however, that is all the more reason to protect taxpayers when the federal government contracts with private companies like Musk's.

We know little about the contract or the mission of the launch itself because that information is classified. What we do know for sure is that on Jan. 7, a top-secret satellite (code-named "Zuma") was launched on one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. Though the rocket didn't explode upon launch this time (something that has happened twice in recent years), the satellite—which is rumored to have cost upward of $3 billion—seemingly failed to maintain orbit and is believed to have ended up in the Indian Ocean.

About the only other thing we know is that taxpayers will eat the loss. In fact, because the mission was classified, we can only speculate as to which government agency was responsible for the mission, not to mention what went wrong, writes Veronique de Rugy.

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