<Face it, only rich people who are far-seeing (or somewhat looney, depending on your point of view), will ever put money into this stuff.

Hi Tom,

You know, I have a theory here and I will expand on it a bit.

This is a very materialistic planet. The rat-race is a very real factor for the majority of the inhabitants and many folks spend their lives in a well-worn path which is geared towards sustenance and then prosperity.

Once you exceed the conventional parameters and goals - and do so at a fairly early age - there are few role models and the parameters don't exist leaving folks on a limb and with no clear goalposts.

You see, you can have your Bang and Olufsen stereo, you can have cars, houses, planes and helicopters and follow the guidelines and then...and then you are on your own.

The present takes on lesser meaning.

So two of the more common ways many deal with it are as follows:

A) Retreat into the past
B) Forge into the future

Older folks generally follow the former and young folks the latter.

One can spend vast sums accumulating old antiquities, shop at Christies and make pilgrimages to one's favorite dealers all over the world every month and compete in collecting old things from other time periods that others have put great value upon. The success of eBay is due in large part to sectors of humanity which regurgitate the past and rechew it

Or one can spend vast sums accumulating the very latest in technologies updating laptops and cellphones like they were seasonal accessories and filling one's homes with gadgets and cutting edge products. One can keep up with the latest products and put early deposits on cars like an XJ220 - or Wiegert's Vector for a built in exclusivity.

Sometimes a blend of the two is very apparent.

You have younger folks like Joseph Firmage who are quasi-actively pursuing space exploration, albeit in unconventional manners. The folks most excited about space are generally younger as they still feel it may be possible to be on one of these next generation starships.

They immerse themselves in the up and coming - and a strange desire to leave this world and its limited parameters behind is a common theme.

The old Trek episode title:

"The world is hollow and I have touched the sky" - is amazingly appropriate for these younger folks. They have pierced the veil of constant goals and the uselessness of marking one's success by material possessions and now see the need for bigger things - things that can't be bought.

The older folks look around throw up their hands and say "The present is a dogpile of plastic coated worthlessness" and the men can be found busy polishing the wood on their Farnsworth Televisions and Stromberg-Carlsen or RCA-Victor radio-phonographs, living in the glory that was, while their surgically-preserved wives are attending couture shows, put on by equally insecure debased status-seekers, to feel young and trendy.

They may have modern "parameter" acceptable cars in their garages but they are likely augmented by lovingly restored classics.

The older folks do not want to be perceived as having 'lost it' or whispered by their equal-tiered friends as having early onset Alzheimer's - because they invested in Space exploration or rocketry or some other equally 'foolish' venture.

The younger folks are bolder and are not yet weighed down by decades of lifestyle patterns and social inhibitions. Unfortunately, the vast majority are also woefully ignorant of space exploration or rocketry altogether - which is a real shame and why the industry truly flounders.

So it is not really that the folks who invest are farseeing or looney - but in my opinion they are folks who have simply broken the illusory material veil which is weekly stuffed down the masses throats by magazines like People, Time, Robb Report, Gourmet, Instyle, and countless others... and the base banality of prime-time television or the lusty profit seeking undercurrent of the Antiques Roadshow.

These folks want more and they find it by looking up - not down or into the past. Like the pioneers of yesterday, most are loners, and a bit (or a lot) dissatisfied with society as a whole.

In the US our general 'goodness' is due to our prosperity and the equally real, but lower veil which is pierced when you can look past simple survival and sustenance - something most American's have achieved.

In nations where sustenance and survival still is the primary goal - goodness and thinking in a more selfless or "farseeing" manner is out-of-place and an uncommon trait. Thinking about space exploration or rocketry is simply inconceivable, perhaps even impossible for 80% of the people living on the earth.

My thirty cents,

SDAI-Tech1