Jose wrote:
But if the boat sinks, you probably have a life jacket, life raft,
life boat, maybe people in the area to assist, etc., in other words
you might survive without the boat or ship.

This might be true if the Queen Mary sinks today. It wasn't true when
the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed. They had each other,
and that was about it.

If one, or all, of the ships had sunk, some may have survived in a long
boat, or even a hunk of mast floating, but the *point* being, they weren't
instantly, automatically doomed when the ship sunk. They still had a
chance, and giving odds of those chances are totally out the window, as
simply having any chance beats no chance.

=They= were pioneers. People on the Queen Mary are tourists.

Yeah, no argument there, how'd the QM get in this? I have NO argument
against any bona fide explorer (there have been some frauds) or pioneer who
ever lived, or ever will live - my position is that the ones operating on
terra firma (or to a lesser degree water) have an advantage over someone
operating in a vacumn @ plus/minus 2-300º (or whatever) millions of miles
from earth. That's it! It's not NASA blaspheme, or condemning space
travel, or setting back the human race. Trust me. I think the folks in the
past have done an unbelievable job - there is absolutely no doubt their
ideas of what was looming ahead was a hell of a lot scarier than what we
have, since we have a damn good idea what's there, and precisely where it's
at, we just don't know what's going to happen en route.

Actually, somebody took off before Lindburgh. They had three people
(IIRC), three motors (a tri-motor Folker), and never made it. So much
for "good chance - ok, fair chance..."). Lindburgh had a one-in-four
chance (in hindsight).

If Lindy would have stayed on course and run out of fuel, he may have at
least been over Ireland, or within sight of France - again 1:4 beats 0:0
odds if your machine quits.

I'd love to believe there was another inhabitable piece of real
estate besides earth, but so far I haven't seen a shred of evidence

There's at least as much evidence as there was to Columbus.

Sending humans 44 million miles with
a gigantic payload, after our robotic rovers and mapping satellites
have shown Mars to be another Death Valley on steriods just doesn't
make a lot of sense to me.

Then don't go. But don't try to stop others from going... even on
your... well I was going to say "dime" but really, it's "tenth of a
hundreth of a penny".


How the hell would I stop others?

But by George, now you've done it! I wouldn't go now if they begged me!
You could even throw in a book deal, and I will NOT take it. A guest
appearance on Bowling For Dollars, maybe..... d:-))