Indeed. And back to the debate itself, and (if I may), I would like to bring back in the psychological/philosophical view:
Human beings are geared to avoiding death, to be terrified by death. We are so scared by the idea that when we die we shall simply cease to exist, and all we have learnt will simply disapear, that we construct religions whose sole purpose is to convince us that as long as we live a certain way we shall live forever!
(Don't get me wrong, I'm religious, I just understand the psychology behind it.)
And, much of science is geared to preventing death. Our medicine, hospital systems, geared to preventing it.
The most important thing is a life support machine. These can keep you alive indefinatley, and people often argue to keep a loved one on, even after they are brain-dead. And yet people can not bear to think of a loved one leaving them, of being deprived of them, that they are willing to keep what effectively is a living corpse alive, in the hope that there will be a miraculous recovery (I'm reffering to the brain-dead cases, not those of other, simmilar conditions). Ironicly it is the religious, those that have least to fear by there relative or loved one dying, that fight most feverently to keep them alive. Those that are firm in the belief that there is an after-life, still refuse to put there faith up to that!
Death horrifies us, and yet fascinates us. The psychology behind that is far more complicated, and I'm not going into it.
The important thing is, that once we discover a way for us to live longer, to acquire immortality, we will take it. We have no other choice really, we're that scared of death. The people in the SA, and Elysia (who originaly developed the technology), would of course put ENORMOUS amounts of research into discovering a way to prevent you from dying. Or at least, once you die being able to come back to life. It's the holy grail of technology!
IC, we can not loose it. Getting rid of all telekinesis was reasonably large, since there are still many cases in the archives of it being used, but think if we took out one of the corner stones of the universe! How would we explain that? How would explain all of the many many times it's been used, all the characters that have back ups? Even making it less reliable ... what explanation are you going to give that?
SA representative "Due to our feeling that mortality is fun and we should give it a go, we're going to make it more likely you die in the line of fire."
Also try and understand that this will mean HUGE gameplay issues. With ST changed or gone, conscription to the SA will plummit. People in Yamatai aren't really used to the idea of dying permenantly, where you can have ST backups. The idea that you could die, for many of them at least, would be alien. They're not going to risk there lives in such an obvious manner, in a universe where space battles cost litteraly millions of deaths in only a matter of minutes, with weapons that can anihilate entire planets and capitol ships with a simple pressing of a button. Then you'd only have Neko's, and even they, designed for combat as they are, may be slightly less enthusaistic about going into battle knowing that they could die for good!
OCC:
It is our natural will to prevent our characters from being killed. Sure we can know that they'll come back, but unless we're really unempathic, we still care whether they live or die. If you read RP's a lot, you'll notice irrational hanging onto characters lives, rather than casualy throwing them away. ST does not make this fight for character survival any less significant, or prominent. Only one person has thrown there lives away recently, and that was one of Luke's characters - who didn't even have a backup!
Players that don't like this could try quite a simple factor - don't take ST backups for your character. Try and get a law passed that means a ranking official does not have the right to force you to have a backup, and then claim you object on a philosphical or religous basis.
"I do not believe in ST backups, since I think it takes away from life. We only live once, and having backups cheapens it."
That is a possible responce, however it is going to be reasonably rare in the SA, since it is part of there culture.
Now as for the efficiency of the technology:
Due to this pathalogical fear of death, people are going to be constantly improving on the technology. It has been around for a long time, and with the resources of the SA, I'm fairly certain they would have perfected it. That is if we're going to be realistic. In addition, recent technology developments in WARMS and PARADOX, mean that ships can violate Heisenburgs uncertaintly principle, and thus get an even more accurate depition of the brain.
With the state of technological perfection that the SA aspires to, I really doubt they'd allow one of there most vital components have more than a negligable (meaning obscenely rare, but could theoreticly happen as a plot device), risk of failure.
I'm burnt out now. Respond and I shall continue.