All aboard for the future of space travel... but it’s a one-way ticket only

WANTED: astronauts to explore new worlds, to seek out new civilisations – to boldly go where no one (or, at least, no sane one) has gone before.

The catch? it’s a one-way ticket. The next generation of star adventurers may hurtle through the cosmos for years or decades on a mission to explore distant planets and stars – and never return to Earth.

A senior NASA official is convinced that the world’s space agencies, or the commercial firms that may eventually succeed them, could issue one-way tickets to space, with the travellers accepting that they would not come back.