Two contemporary ships - Santa Maria and a Zheng He treasure ship.
The parallels between the Zheng He treasure fleets vs contemporary Portugese commercial ventures and Apollo (and Shuttle and ISS ..) and efforts like Virgin Galacitc and SpaceX are obvious and Nick does a better job at that than I can.
IZheng He (Qeng Ho) serves as the namesake for the 'good guys' in one of my favorite novels 'A Deepness in the Sky'.
