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 Niņa, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed. They had each other,
and that was about it.
=They= were pioneers. People on the Queen Mary are tourists.
My *primary* point the last few posts, has been odds of survival
What were the odds of survival of the Pilgrims? (based on the number
that survived, vs the number that died enroute or in the first, say,
year) What are the odds of survival of an astronaut? (based on number
who died in flight, or in the first year of their colonization of a new
planet)
You mentioned Lindbergh (Lucky Lindy!), and I kind
of remember reading he landed with fumes (?) left in his gas tanks;
however, if he had run out, he still had a good chance, ok - fair chance in
the Spirit of STL 
, of gliding down to a safe landing, Plan B, and maybe
Plan C would follow Plan B if he ditched in the ocean and was left floating
around, Plan D if the rescue craft sunk, and so on.
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).
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".
Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
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