But-in the context of history as we are seeing it-it is, indeed, reasonable." Her smile widened momentarily. "And I believe we can all find profit in the publicity." Gupta laughed. "Indeed, indeed we can, Madame Speaker!" He heard and answered additional questions, but the expressions on the faces, the way in which the questions were phrased… The conclusion had already been reached. They would try.
They would at least try. If they could manage to see this project through, the results would transform the world. He thought back to a conversation he'd had years earlier with Jackie Secord where he expressed his lack of complete enthusiasm for the Ares Project's intended approach to space exploitation. One of his major concerns was, and had always been, that the benefits of extending humanity's reach into space be brought to all of humanity, not simply to its wealthiest and most privileged classes and nations. Brought, not in some fuzzy handwaving sense, but in the hard and practical ways an engineer could appreciate. Despite all the economic shifts of the past decades, the United States had always managed to stay-sometimes just barely-ahead of the other countries in its influence and power. Gupta didn't begrudge them that status; he was an American citizen himself, after all. But he felt it was far past time for other countries, especially his native land, to step forward from the red, white, and blue shadow by taking the best that America had to offer and making it their own.