If it was truly controlled, the artillery wouldn't have ventured past the area they'd predicted it would travel and it was careless and dangerous for them to even be doing something like this where even the most microscopic of a chance that human life could be endangered existed when there are a wealth of far-more-isolated areas available for them to go. Like I said before, they proudly mention Adam and Jamie's 30+ years experience in the fields pertinent to the experiments they carry out. A potentially-fatal accident of this caliber blows any "controlled-environment" defense clear out of the water.
All I got out of this was: "HEY GUYS NOTHING IS PERFECT AND YOU MADE A MISTAKE. YOU CAN JUST GO AHEAD AND SEND ME MILLIONS OF DOLLARS NOW"
Seriously, accidents happen. They took the precautions as they thought necessary. The police supervising the experiment obviously agreed everything was safe. The show has a pretty impressive track record concerning safety. This was just a freak accident and making them pay anything other than property damages would be ludicrous.
Where did I even mention money dude? You trolling or something? The ALL CAPS portion of your post has absolutely nothing to do with what you quoted. Nothing will change the fact that they proved they don't know nearly enough about cannonball-firing to be trusted to conduct experiments with 'em. They really know their shit well on a multitude of other things but this could've taken the lives of people whom were probably thoroughly unaware of any nearby impendng danger so it clearly proved that they shouldn't be doing experiments like that where ANY possibility of third-party endangerment exists. I don't want their show cancelled, I'm not arguing on behalf of frivolous lawsuits (quote where I did, next time you wanna take me out of context), and no arguement of how the cops deemed it safe changes the fact that a lethal-force projectile entered a non-controlled area and needlessly put others at risk of harm.
Additionally, (1) the show probably has the budget to fly them out to a truly remote location where something like this incident would be a true impossibility or (2) if Discovery doesn't give them a budget sufficient for that then they shouldn't just compromise by taking the "safest" of all the remaining viable locations as a compromise rather than simply not doing it in the first place.