NASA’s announcement of a new role and name for the Orion space capsule was welcome news in Colorado on Tuesday, where about 750 Lockheed Martin employees, subcontractors and suppliers are working on the project. Orion was originally part of the Constellation program, former President George W. Bush’s plan to return humans to the moon. President Barack Obama scrapped that project but spared Orion for possible use as an escape pod for the space station. NASA said Orion would be used to carry four astronauts on 21-day missions outside Earth’s orbit, possibly to an asteroid. On return, it would land in the Pacific Ocean. NASA is renaming it the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

Humans could be walking on Mars within the next couple decades, for only a fraction of the cost the United States has already budgeted for space exploration. How? The answer is simple, say a pair of Mars researchers: Give the explorers a one-way ticket.
The most costly and tricky part of any manned space mission is providing life-support for its human crew: food, oxygen, and protection from radiation and other hazards of space travel. On a human mission to Mars, most of the cost – some 80 percent of it – would involve returning the crew to Earth, say Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies in the October-November issue of the Journal of Cosmology. Rather than quintuple the cost, those funds could go toward building a permanent settlement, the two scientists argue.
They propose that, after several unmanned missions drop supplies at a base station on the Red Planet, two spacecraft carrying two humans each would be sent on the six- to eight-month voyage to Mars to begin the first human colony on another planet.
Further missions would continue to supply the first settlers, who would be older, beyond child-bearing age, and – of course – volunteers.