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I'll admit it's 99% certain, but I won't agree with 100%.

Firstly, yes, if we take a 120 year time span, then everybody involved with the project will die. If we take a shorter time span, then it is *not* certain.
Secondly, it does value the human race's achievements higher than any individual human life, yes.

And what if it doesn't?

If it were a guaranteed, automatic return on investment, you wouldn't need to be pressuring people to do it, now would you?

Ergo, it is not a guaranteed, automatic return on investment.

Yes but they just do unimportant stuff that doesn't matter. They can afford to sacrifice progress for safety because it doesn't matter how much progress they make, none of it matters to our race.

I do see your point, Austin, but in my view, they are all part of the same process and same budget. As I see it, every $1000 more they have to spend on test firing safety precautions is a $1000 off the R&D. And to me, the R&D is so important nothing should take precedence.

But I guess that's just me.

If the safety regulating bureaucrats will pay for the increased safety out of their own pockets instead of mandating the company spend their own money on it, then I'm all for safety regulations, though. Safety is great, but the company shouldn't have to spend its own money on it -- money that should go on the important R&D.

I suppose, but I think the ability to move much heavier things I think is a bigger gain so I think it's a net plus...but YMMV.

I don't see *anything* about a *car* "leading edge". Or even an airplane.

Hell yes. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Columbus would never have gotten out of the harbor if he'd had to fulfill modern safety regulations.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/ … nes-health

Summary: Scaled Composites, a private space tourism company, had poor safety protocols and a bunch of people were killed in an explosion.

What pisses me off is the government daring to mandate higher safety regulations from here on ("We cooperated fully with Cal/OSHA during the investigation, and we continue to work with the agency so that the enhanced procedures already implemented promote the safest workplace conditions possible."). That's bullshit. "Safest possible"? What kind of absolute moron demands safety out of the *leading edge* of orbital transportation?

Did governments demand the "safest workplace conditions possible" of Columbus when he discovered America? Of Magellan when he circumnavigated the globe? Of the Wright Brothers or Gottlieb Daimler? Were Livingstone's expeditions "the safest possible"? How about Sir Edmund Hillary's? Thor Heyerdahl's? Being on the leading edge of science and exploration is *by nature* unsafe business! If you try to mandate safety out of the leading edge, you *gut* it like NASA has been gutted!

40 years ago we were sending people regularly 384,000 km away to the Moon -- now we're barely managing to send them 350 km away to low Earth orbit, and not even that if Obama has his way! Governmental manned space exploration has been *gutted* to a thousandth of the distance it was reaching during Apollo, and when private companies try to make up for the government's pussyness, they get slapped down! How DARE they! Some motherfucking pencil-necked bureaucrat geeks who sit in their office, having NO CONCEPTION of the risks men need to take to advance the race! If you can't stand the motherfucking heat, then get out of the goddamn kitchen! PEOPLE WILL DIE when we're on the leading edge. Nobody LIKES that, but you either ACCEPT it, or let safety paranoia CRIPPLE and GUT you when you end up spending more time on safety than on actual engineering. Fuck that shit!

Companies on the leading edge should be exempt from any and all safety regulations. You wanna work there, you accept the goddamn risks. If you can't handle the risk, then go work for some unremarkable automobile manufacturer who's kept making the same model for 50 years and where every single procedure is tested and true. The leading edge DOES NOT NEED people who are afraid.

Motherfucking safety bureaucrats should all be lined up and executed.

I agree with every other statement you've made, John, but can you back this one up?

I strongly endorse this article.

Humans evolved to hunter-gatherers. Physically, we are mammoth-hunters. Our physiology is evolved to be at its best when we are regularly exerted during each day. Putting aside the concept of orgasms needing to evolve (which I don't think they need to, they're quite wonderful as-is), we are currently *lacking*, due to societal reasons, the physical exertion that our bodies are evolved to need to stay healthy.

Our bodies are evolved to require exertion. The current Western sedentary lifestyle does not automatically provide it. Hence, a higher gravity would only be restoring something that societal development took away.

It's like suddenly exhausting vitamin C supply in your area, by extincting oranges or something. Your body is still evolved to need it to stay healthy, but it's now gone from your world.