I submit the problem is with step 2. You seem to think we should mitigate all the risks we can. I think step 3 should be part of step 2. Evaluate each risk and decide whether it needs to be mitigated and to what extent. If we just assume we're going to mitigate any and all risks that we have the capability of doing we end up where we are now with slow progress and insane costs. With regard to understanding the risks I admit I don't know specifically what they are for a given launch but I think you should be able to distill it down to a probability of loss of life on any given mission. I think you would still get a large number of qualified volunteers if the number was 10% or even 20% chance of death on the first experimental flight. Things don't have to be 99.999% safe for people to attempt them...

I guess I wasn't clear. What I meant was that by leaving a CD on a park bench (which is publicly accessible) I could, by your reasoning, be liable if someone comes along, copies the CD, and replaces the CD on the park bench. By your reasoning I have 'distributed' the CD by allowing (intentionally or not) someone to copy it.

So in this case too I could admit that a crime had taken place but that crime wasn't theft (the CD was returned) and I'd argue that leaving the CD there wasn't 'distribution' so the only crime was copyright infringement by the person who copied the CD on the bench.

Oh well, it doesn't really matter anyways I just think that you have to be careful with defining the word 'distribution' as if it includes unintentional public access you can get into all kinds of weird situations. Are you 'distributing' alcohol to minors if you forget to lock up a store with alcohol in it? etc, etc?