Who decides the outcome of each event? The Kalshi team?
For example en the Moon landing example, I guess NASA will make press release, but it looks impossible to automate reading it and deciding. (What if the starship colides with the Moon? What if they can't return? What if it explodes 5 seconds after landing? What if it's a joint NASA+ESA project?)
The determination of an event will vary by contract, but are all external sources of validation, listed in the contract up front. For example, the moon landing resolves to yes if NASA announces by X date. GDP is resolved by Bureau of Economic Analysis, Inflation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so on.
Generally, event contracts are legal contracts technically. We have a team that spent a ton of time developing templates to incorporate all types of events (hard problem). Here's an example definition: https://kalshi-public-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/regulatory/ruleb...
>Landing is defined as making contact with the surface of the Moon.
This is hand-waving a bit, and not only doesn't address the OP's question (does a fatal collision count,) but is a good example of the ambiguities that could plague any "simple" contract.
I would think for ultimate compliance that Kalshi would be the first order-judges, but if the parties disagreed, these ultimately get decided upon by an actual Judge giving a good-faith determination of the question with a reasonable persons' definition of the terms.
For example en the Moon landing example, I guess NASA will make press release, but it looks impossible to automate reading it and deciding. (What if the starship colides with the Moon? What if they can't return? What if it explodes 5 seconds after landing? What if it's a joint NASA+ESA project?)