They are, depending on your perspective, either pursuing the ultimate vanity project or are on the forefront of a new age of exploration that harkens back to the great adventurers of centuries past when men (and they were nearly all men) ventured into the vast blank spots on the world map.
But of course the truth is this story began centuries ago, when horsemen descended to the plains from a lost kingdom called Futa Djallon, long before Europe's map makers turned their minds to the niggling problem of how to fill those blank spaces.