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The FARs seem to follow a consistent philosophy. Prime directive is don't hurt innocent people uninvolved with your adventure. In the case of rockets this has

The FARs seem to follow a consistent philosophy. Prime directive is don't hurt innocent people uninvolved with your adventure. In the case of rockets this has to mean launch windows that don't intersect with air traffic and plans to avoid dropping burning boosters full of fuel into playgrounds. Second directive is try not to kill your friends and employees. After that, if it's just you, you can have a lot of leeway as long as the paperwork is in order.

londons_explore 7y ago
I'd actually like to see it even slacker than this. Do what you want, but if you kill someone, you're gonna have to pay a big fine to the government, and you're going to have to have insurance to pay that fine if you go bankrupt. Then the only question is how big should the fine be - and the FAA should set that to trade off safety vs progress. Let's start at $250M per life lost. Insurance for that would probably work out to ~10 million per launch, given current accident rates.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  So now it becomes a cost / benefit analysis, and the loss of life is just the cost of doing business? Apparently a SpaceX launch is $57 million dollars. Given that you've massively reduced the regulations - if the red tape is in fact large enough to be a pain and the FAA is justified in reducing it to spur innovation, I bet you've saved that $10 million right there - totally worth it. Keep the deaths to a mostly low number, adjust insurance as needed, and you're golden! No more letting the price of a human life get in the way of private enterprise!
  - rwcarlsen 7y ago
    It is always possible anywhere in uncountable ways to spend money to save lives. Whether you like the idea or not, we all make trade-off decisions about money vs lives every day.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I feel like it should be government making the decisions on whats safe or not, not companies.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        I'll say the opposite - the government should set the optimization target ($/life) and companies should do the optimization to meet that target themselves.
        SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        That could end up with cars with incredibly high tech laser collision detection system and no seat-belts.
        DuskStar 7y ago
        And if that was safe enough for the cost of installing seatbelts on a car to be more than the marginal safety benefit, I would want that to happen. What's the point of having seatbelts in a car that never crashes, after all? And if the cars still do crash occasionally, I would expect the manufacturers to leave the seatbelts in for as long as that made sense. Similarly, what if someone invents an airbag system that works significantly better than current setups, but requires that the user not be wearing a seatbelt because that leads to acceleration in the wrong direction? Should we have to wait for the government to update their standards, or should companies be allowed to improve things immediately? This is all an incentives problem, and so the idea is to make the incentives align. If the manufacturer is penalized for your death by an amount equal to your value of your life, the incentives are aligned. If the manufacturer just has to make it have a seat belt and airbags, they'll make the flashiest system they can advertise regardless of how it works in the real world. We have independent testing to attempt to validate those claims, but the incentive structure is still all wrong.
  - ggreer 7y ago
    Most government agencies price lives around $10 million.[1][2] An ancient Slate Star Codex post does a good job explaining the reasoning (https://web.archive.org/web/20180408043513/https://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180408043513/https://squid314....): > Contrary to popular belief, you can put a dollar value on human life. That dollar value is $5.8 million. Denying this leads to terrible consequences. Let me explain. 1. https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-valuation https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States

londons_explore 7y ago

I'd actually like to see it even slacker than this. Do what you want, but if you kill someone, you're gonna have to pay a big fine to the government, and you're going to have to have insurance to pay that fine if you go bankrupt. Then the only question is how big should the fine be - and the FAA should set that to trade off safety vs progress. Let's start at $250M per life lost. Insurance for that would probably work out to ~10 million per launch, given current accident rates.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
So now it becomes a cost / benefit analysis, and the loss of life is just the cost of doing business? Apparently a SpaceX launch is $57 million dollars. Given that you've massively reduced the regulations - if the red tape is in fact large enough to be a pain and the FAA is justified in reducing it to spur innovation, I bet you've saved that $10 million right there - totally worth it. Keep the deaths to a mostly low number, adjust insurance as needed, and you're golden! No more letting the price of a human life get in the way of private enterprise!
- rwcarlsen 7y ago
  It is always possible anywhere in uncountable ways to spend money to save lives. Whether you like the idea or not, we all make trade-off decisions about money vs lives every day.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I feel like it should be government making the decisions on whats safe or not, not companies.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      I'll say the opposite - the government should set the optimization target ($/life) and companies should do the optimization to meet that target themselves.
      - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        That could end up with cars with incredibly high tech laser collision detection system and no seat-belts.
        DuskStar 7y ago
        And if that was safe enough for the cost of installing seatbelts on a car to be more than the marginal safety benefit, I would want that to happen. What's the point of having seatbelts in a car that never crashes, after all? And if the cars still do crash occasionally, I would expect the manufacturers to leave the seatbelts in for as long as that made sense. Similarly, what if someone invents an airbag system that works significantly better than current setups, but requires that the user not be wearing a seatbelt because that leads to acceleration in the wrong direction? Should we have to wait for the government to update their standards, or should companies be allowed to improve things immediately? This is all an incentives problem, and so the idea is to make the incentives align. If the manufacturer is penalized for your death by an amount equal to your value of your life, the incentives are aligned. If the manufacturer just has to make it have a seat belt and airbags, they'll make the flashiest system they can advertise regardless of how it works in the real world. We have independent testing to attempt to validate those claims, but the incentive structure is still all wrong.
- ggreer 7y ago
  Most government agencies price lives around $10 million.[1][2] An ancient Slate Star Codex post does a good job explaining the reasoning (https://web.archive.org/web/20180408043513/https://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180408043513/https://squid314....): > Contrary to popular belief, you can put a dollar value on human life. That dollar value is $5.8 million. Denying this leads to terrible consequences. Let me explain. 1. https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-valuation https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States