> I don't know if the risk of hitting a building outside the flight corridor is high enough to be important.

It is. From the New Yorker post:

“The Federal Aviation Administration regulates the private space industry and sets aside airspace for each mission, seeking to prevent collisions with general air traffic, including commercial airliners, and to limit civilian casualties in the event of an accident. The regulator uses formulas detailed in a hundred-and-twenty-one-page document—including an equation for calculating expected casualties—to assess the safety of a given spaceflight. According to the F.A.A., an acceptable Ec, as the equation is called, involves no more than one expected casualty per ten thousand missions.”

So there needs to be less than a 0.01% chance of killing someone on the ground. As a bystander on the ground, that seems an acceptable level of risk to tolerate for someone else’s joyride.

> So there needs to be less than a 0.01% chance of killing someone on the ground.

Even less, as accidents that do kill people on the ground may easily kill more than one.

> that seems an acceptable level of risk to tolerate for someone else’s joyride.

Let’s do that math on air flights. Pre-covid, there were 38 million air flights a year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-industry-...). One in 10,000 would mean 3,800 bystanders killed on the ground each year.

I would think that, in reality, way fewer got killed (might be ignorance), and 3,800 would feel unacceptable. So, why would we accept that of these joyrides? Is “because there are so few of them” an acceptable answer to that?

> 38 million air flights a year

You are replying to a comment about spaceflight regulations

I know, but I don’t see why we would allow those to be riskier for bystanders than other things.

In this case, I even think we should accept more risk from commercial flights than from a billionaire’s hobby.

I saw that, but I'm not convinced that the course deviation endangered anyone on the ground. It might have screwed up the landing, but that's not the same thing.

Fortunately, you're not the one they need to convince.

The FAA is doing an investigation to see if they could have, and then they'll make a decision, rather than jumping to conclusions.

Yes, clearly, but a lot of other people seem to be convinced. Please tell them they're being unfortunate too.

On what you are basing this conviction?

I don't have a conviction.

When I said I wasn't convinced, that wasn't a cheeky way of saying I was convinced of the opposite.

It's safe enough to let test pilots (and one attention seeking billionaire) into the rocket. That doesn't mean that it's safe for the general public. You can do all kinds of foolhardy nonsense with self-built airplanes without pissing off the FAA, but the moment you try and sell a ticket life is going to get unpleasant fast.

Also, this craft has, you know, actually killed someone.