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Any busdriver or airliner pilot is responsible for more people on a daily basis.

You do know that Engineers and Software Developers help build buses and airplanes too, right? Those guys are responsible for every single flight on that aircraft. Not only for all the people that fly on them, but also the airline investment.

If you think software developers (or bus drivers, or airline pilots) can get paranoid, you should see what happens before test flights on airplanes.

Good point. They aren't responsible for billions of dollars going poof, though (especially the bus driver).

A lot of people put the value of a life at around the expected work society gets from it - and then try to argue that that's not what they really think, obviously, because doing so would be immoral.

A single A380 (ok, that's a big one, but why not) is worth about $300 million. Not quite billions, but it's still more dough than most if not all of us will see in a lifetime.

Other problem is though, A380's cost a lot but probably get built at a decent rate. If someone had say caused a software bug in say new horizons, that could mean no pluto mission for a decade if not longer. So no loss of life but certainly a big loss.

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