...put 3,000 people out to sea in virtual floating cities.

Now we have the technology today to cram 3,000

people into a (1000 ton?) mega-aircraft that could be powered by a

dozen jumbo-jet jet engines.

We already have the European Airbus 380 that can

be loaded with 850 passengers in reasonable comfort.

and flown nonstop across the Atlantic.

It is now theoretically possible for two huge jets

to take as many lives as the Titanic did.

Fortunately, space travel is still far from the point

where such grizzly statistics are possible. But this decade

may see space fatalities from one accident that can

be measured in double digits. This century we might have the

potential to see triple digit fatalities from a passenger-carrying spacecraft, but it's still decades away.