Once again, Larry J has made an important point:

"According to a report I've read, some 4% of all the people who have flown into space have died on a mission. Despite these known risks, there's no shortage of people willing to fly into space. If we're going to have people risk their lives on spaceflight, can't we do it for something meaningful? Going once again "where everyone has gone before" (LEO) hardly seems meaningful to me."

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One of my heros is Sir Francis Drake. After saving England from the Spanish Armada, he could have spent the rest of his life in comfortable retirement. However he opted instead to cruise the Caribbean and raid Spanish gold ships as Queen Elizabeth's privateer. During one successful raiding campaign, he had jettisoned all the stone ballast on his ship "The Golden Hind" and replaced it with gold and silver. He so completely pissed off the Spanish that they were blocking his escape route back to England. By using captured Spanish navigation aids, Admiral Drake sailed around Cape Horn and worked his way up the west coast of the Americas. Eventually he got to California which was then terra incognita. The hull of the Golden HInd was leaking so he went into either San Francisco Bay or Drakes Bay in Marin County. There he careened the Golden HInd and gave it a full refit, spending a couple months in Northern California. He then refloated the Golden HInd and proceeded to sail across the Pacific, go around the world and eventually returned to England for a hero's welcome.

Talk about balls of brass!

We Americans are descended from people like Sir Francis Drake. Compared to him, we're a bunch of damned cowards. Why can't we acheive greatness like he did?

Gary