Armstrong’s Insurance


When Neil Armstrong & team were getting ready for their moonshot, they found it next to impossible to get life insurance. Either the companies refused outright to issue such a policy or the premiums were ridiculously large. Which made sense: how many people really thought they could make the trip and come back in one (live) piece?

In fact, even the US government had a letter ready to be read out just in case the astronauts got stranded on the moon! Check it out:

So you can’t really blame the insurance companies this time, can you?

Then again, the astronauts still wanted their loved ones to get some money in case they died. But was there a solution?

Turns out Armstrong wasn’t just a good astronaut, aerospace engineer and pilot: he was also good about money matters. He figured a way out to make sure his family would be taken care if things went wrong. So what was his solution?

They signed  hundreds of autographs on envelopes in the quarantine month leading to their take off. Why on envelopes, you ask? Well, they had asked one of their friends who took them to the post office for postmarking on specific, important days. Days like when they would land on the moon. If they died, those envelopes would be worth a lot of money!

As it turned out, they came back alive. And the envelopes were still worth a lot of money! How much? They were selling for $30,000 twenty years back. And as with artists, their value would surely have shot up even more if the astronauts died.

Armstrong and company won both ways!

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