Seafaring ships of the great age of exploration were largely wooden, and — with the aid of their human crew — self-repairing; subject to the availability of raw materials, there wasn’t much aboard a 16th or 17th century sailing ship that couldn’t be made on board. Aside from carpentry, the inhabitants of even a relatively small port could make the necessities to keep a ship at sea on a voyage of years — a smithy, a pottery, a glass-blower, weavers of sailcloth and makers of hardtack. Shipbuilding was by no means easy (it was an economic activity born on the backs of the large numbers of peasant farmers and fisherfolk it took to provide the surplus to feed the workers in the shipyards) but it wasn’t anything like the Apollo project, which sucked up the labour of a third of a million skilled engineers and technicians for a decade. The word ship therefore comes freighted with connotations of autonomy and sustainability that are inappropriate to space travel as we know it today. And one of the most perfidious, misleading, damning, unconscious associations of the word “ship” is the word “destination”.

Waypoints located on the surface of the Earth are usually defined in two dimensions (e.g., longitude and latitude); those used in the Earth’s atmosphere or in outer space are defined in at least three dimensions (four if time is one of the coordinates, as it might be for some waypoints outside the Earth).

The moratorium and dream pursuing type of freeter deliberately chooses not to join the rat race in the usually strict and conservative companies (see: Culture of Japan) but instead wants to take a time-out to enjoy life or have specific dreams incompatible with a standard Japanese career

The sense of stasis in many Western countries is reminiscent of Japan, where talk of a lost generation has been around since as long ago as 1995. Some 3.1 million Japanese aged 25 to 34 work as temps or contract employees—up from 2 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Many Japanese blame the young people themselves, saying they are spoiled, alienated “freeters"—a term meaning job-hopping part-timers

the Pew study reveals some other interesting statistical tidbits that point to broad economically-driven lifestyle shifts among Generation Y. For example, 12% of respondents have recruited a roommate to defray their housing costs. 15% of respondents under 35 report postponing marriage because of the recession and 14% put off having a baby. These findings, coupled with surging community college enrollment and the highest unemployment rate among workers aged 16- 24 in the last 60 years, point to a cohort of young Americans whose career and life trajectories are being significantly shaped by the current recession and who are either delaying or reversing traditional adult milestone activities and decisions

Governments have cut interest rates, created new electronic money and allowed budget deficits to reach record levels in an attempt to boost growth after the near-collapse of the global financial system, but Turner said the problems in Dubai were indicative of widespread malaise. “Despite having oil, it’s still the case that many of these countries had explosive credit growth. It’s very clear that in 2010, we’ve got plenty more problems in store.”