One of the problems is that, apart from war, there is very little left for men to do, and women are getting in on the fighting, too! But technology has made so many of the old, dangerous, physically challenging jobs much safer and easier.

It's very hard for a man who has spent all day at a desk to come home feeling he has filled his role as protector and provider. All that unresolved instinctive behaviour coils up on itself and comes out in all sorts of ways. The workaholic, the serial adulterer, the gym-rat, the sports fanatic, the uncommunicative lump on the sofa, the domestic tyrant, the abuser, the drinker, the gambler, the hard-driving saleman, the risk-taking investor, the white-collar criminal. All different answers to the lack of risk in modern life.

One thing that can make men feel better is seeing other men doing great things as part of a national effort.

The wars of the early 20th Century, the space programme, even the Cold War, gave many men the chance to believe that they were contributing or sharing in something big, important and dangerous (even if those feelings were vicarious). But our safe, risk-averse world where everything is based on avoiding rich folk losing money leaves us with nothing to get our metaphorical teeth into.

They're trying to get back into space, and that's good. It would be better, though, if they stopped sending robots to Mars or into the deep trenches under the sea and started sending men! Dangerous? That's the point!