It is 25 minutes into the film before Captain Boyd, who is in virtually every scene, utters his first full sentence.
John Spencer's last film. Between its release and his death from a heart attack in December 2005, he eschewed any movie roles due to his full-time job playing Leo McGarry on À la Maison Blanche (1999).
Partially, and very loosely, inspired by the "Donner Party" disaster of 1847.
When Ives says "Morality - the last bastion of a coward", the line is paraphrasing, in an inverted manner, author Umberto Eco: "Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards." Both ideas imply that noble, and on the opposite side of the spectrum, abhorrent behaviour, can be justified or excused depending on the circumstances. In the film's context, Ives is stating that traditional ideas of morality have no meaning and are useless in a remote frontier world.