“There: that red coal burning on the horizon. We?re going. And we?re not sending smart toys on our behalf – we?re sending human beings, and one of them will put his boot on the sand and bring the number of worlds we?ve visited to three. And when he plants the flag he will use flesh and sinew and blood and bone to drive it into the ground.” James Lileks —Lileks on Space Exploration: Mars and BeyondLileks (The Bleat))

What looks like an unrelated introduction about a kid’s mylar balloon actually fits perfectly with the essay’s main theme.