I’m keying this over the Atlantic, propelled by four CF6 Turbofans at 900 kilometers per hour, along with hundreds of other men women and families on their way to or away from home.

Yesterday I listened to another man speak about a different flavor of assisted flight, namely, commercial space travel. How it would give all of us an opportunity to depart our drudge on the surface and witness the Earth from space. How this life-changing moment would inspire in us a sense of mankind’s unique position in the universe and a feeling of oneness across nations and faiths.

I have not witnessed the Earth from space, and I can imagine the event is momentous. But distractingly, I could predict this commercial astronaut candidate’s next words and even his pauses. He was speaking from a teleprompter, and I could read his rows mechanically rolling by from where I was sitting.

And suddenly it was strikingly clear that men aspire the final frontier for themselves, not anyone else. For the supremacy, the platinum, the speaking gigs.

And I remembered a friend of mine, a woman who graduated the Russian cosmonaut training program, and thought if we really must go up, I hope she goes first.

The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.