Amid all the coronavirus worries, heres a positive development: NASA this month began taking applications for new astronauts.

You probably wont qualify: Candidates must have STEM backgrounds, and the odds of being accepted in the last round were 50 times worse than those for Harvard applicants.

Plus NASAs at least four years away from getting anyone to the moon though thats far from the only manned mission now on the planning boards.

On the other hand, firms like Axiom Space and Elon Musks SpaceX are starting to offer regular commercial trips that are (literally) out of this world and you dont need to be a real astronaut.

Its not cheap: You need to fork over $55 million for a seat on the first fully private-sector spaceflight, slated for next year complete with two days of space travel and eight days at the International Space Station. (Better act fast: Only two of the three available seats are left, reports The New York Times.)

But prices will come down, as the long-term prospects for off-planet exploration and residency are improving.

NASA is forging ahead with its Moon to Mars program, with a planned lunar landing date in 2024.

The moon leg, called Artemis (Apollos twin sister), includes an orbiting spacecraft with room for astronauts to live for up to three months, while shuttling back and forth to the lunar surface.

Thatll allow for extended periods of exploration and access to more moon sites, including, notably, the lunar South Pole, which is thought to hold hundreds of millions of tons of ice. (Off-Earth ice is a huge asset for further space exploration.)

NASA hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the moon as it searches for scientific discoveries and lays the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy.

Artemis will also help NASA prepare for a trip to Mars in the 2030s. And the agencys not alone with its Martian dreams: SpaceX and other private firms are eyeing colonization of the next planet out from the sun.

Its important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars, says Musk, whose company is working on plans to get there. The Red Planet is far enough away that, in the event of a war, its more likely mankind can survive there than on the moon.

Musk hopes to ferry 1 million people to Mars by 2050 via 1,000 Starships a year, each with 100 people and materials to sustain them, for 10 years.

Such visions are ambitious. But space exploration and development come with big payback: They broaden knowledge, create possibilities for new applications and hold out enormous economic potential, with resources to be mined and space jobs to be filled.

And even if Musks worry about a humanity-ending war is excessive, having an off-Earth refuge may be handy for other reasons such as an outbreak of something even worse than COVID-19.

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NASA and private sector have big plans for space travel and they're recruiting - New York Post