If I might venture to mediate, here...

I think what Greg is saying is that, at high enough technologies, truly unsurvivable situations become rare. Larry Niven captured a view of this in his short story "Safe at Any Speed". But it should be noted that Niven said that he wrote that story specifically to demonstrate that such technology (and in the story's case, a psychic luck effect) makes interesting stories really hard to write. I'd extend that to making interesting roleplaying hard as well.

What Richard is saying is that the "feel" of Traveller is one in which equipment is far from perfect, and people rather than machines save the day. It certainly requires some handwaving to get that setting; I think we'll all admit that (e.g.) Iain M. Banks has a more plausible view of ultra-high-tech civilization (summary: humans are AI's pets and tools) than Traveller. Traveller is 1970s tech and 1940s storytelling values superimposed over an interstellar setting, with a few new technologies thrown in -- and those without adequate thought given to their implications (see e.g. the planet-killer lifeboat conundrum). Being a game, designed to be fun and interesting for players, we willingly suspend our disbelief for the sake of a good story, while *also* having meta-fun trying to cram observed canon into some kind of coherent framework.