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Seeing your experience I'm taking that as a healthy compliment, thanks.

I'm hoping we don't have a 2+ year wait here to get back in the game. Its bad enough that the program is basically on a shoe string. I want some of our eggs out of this basket and believe space exploration is THE way to go in the long run economically, from the military strategic standpoint, and because it provides a beacon of hope and dreams to even the lowest of us.

If I had a Gates-esque fortune I'd offer all of it for a chance to go up, even if it was in the worst tin can piece of Russian scrap available. People say to me "but its dangerous" and I reply that they've got to be high not to be willing to take even a 5 or 10% chance of death to do something that until 40 some odd years ago NO man had ever done. Even now only the most elite, the best, brightest and most blessed of humanity has ever done it. Have, from probably their childhood, set their sights on the heavens, surpassed thousands of others in their achievements, and won the rare and precious privledge of looking down from the heavens on this small blue orb or travelled to its moon.

Its hard to hold back a tear for the families and loved ones of the seven who perished but in my heart I know that that seven along with the Challenger crew, the Apollo crew and the Russian cosmonauts that have perished in this endevour will allways stand at the head of the line of greatest representatives of the human race who ever said "Follow me! Lets discover whats beyond there!"

Thanks to you and others like you also for devoting the years to making it possible too!