> if testing the whole thing must take 10 years to be safe and a gazillion dollars, then so be it. If it's too much to shoulder, then they should not enter the business
That sounds like a succinct explanation for why we've been stuck in LEO since December 19, 1972.
We've got 7 billion+ humans on the surface of our planet. We lose about 1.8/s to various tragedies.
Most of which are of less import than helping automate something that's responsible for around 32,000 deaths in the US every year. Move fast, break people for a just cause, escape risk-averse sociotechnological local minima, and build a future where fewer people die.