EXPLORING OUR HUMAN LIMITS

When polar explorers were trying to reach the North Pole in the early part of this century, the question might have been asked then, as now: What's the point. Whoever got there first was only going to find more snow. Or when mountain climbers were trying to scale Mount Everest, what was the point? There was nothing but inhospitable real estate up there.

Now the names of Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Great Britain will go into the history books as the first men to circumnavigate the globe in a hot-air balloon. Others have failed, often spending millions of dollars in the process. What, exactly, was the point?

Journeys into the unknown frequently tell us less about the Arctic ice cap or thin air at 29,000 feet above sea level than they do about ourselves, about our ability to solve problems, to overcome obstacles, to endure the limits of the human body. From this we learn that there are always more amazing puzzles to solve.

It is what makes us human.