"humanity's willingness to risk even death in pursuit of something greater." I would rephraze this as 'humanity's capability to sustain a large range of psycho

"humanity's willingness to risk even death in pursuit of something greater." I would rephraze this as 'humanity's capability to sustain a large range of psychological profiles and the capability to filter out from the general population the particular individuals fitting for a given task'. My understanding is the astronauts were a very specific niche group and mostly wanted to fly faster and higher than anyone before them, and were willing to pay any price to achieve this.