Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll fall among the stars~

01:31 Oct 24, 2002 

"Shoot for the moon" in gambling means to place all of your cash on one bet.
Figuratively your citation suggests, that if you really want something, put everything you have into your effort to get it. Then adds, if you fail, you are in good company as lots of great people have put all they had into some important project and failed.

Scientificly, this won�t work, because you put everything into a shot at the moon, and fall short, you still won�t reach the stars, but will just fall back to earth the place where you started.

I assume the figurative explanation is the normal one.

01:24 Oct 23, 2002 

I first treated "fall among" and "shoot for" as "all", "among", "shoot" (meaning speed to a destination) and "for". However, "shoot for" and "fall among", as 2 phrasal verbs, could be interpreted in derived meanings of "aim at" and "get something by chance". What way shall I go, the strictly literal way or the less liberally literal way?

Thanks