>> in five years, gernhardt hopes to see his -- a good test.ut before it can go any further out like to an asteroid, there's one big problem, getting it there. the space shuttle won't do the trick. it wasn't designed for deep space missions. and it's simply not safe enough. nasa administrator charlie boldin was a shuttle commander. >> crazy people like me, we'll do anything and we'll fly anything. but in order to expand the capability to bring more people into space flight, we needed a vehicle that had a capability for crews to escape. >> the new crew vehicle, bigger than the old apollo capsules, is already in the works. it will be, nasa says, ten times safer than a shuttle. putting it on top of the rocket, not on the side, gives the astronauts a better chance of surviving an accident. the escape system is already being tested. but to get the crew and all their supplies for a long journey out of the atmosphere, the space agency needs a powerful heavy-lift rocket. it's supposed to be ready by 2016. the first test vehicle might look a bit like th

>> in five years, gernhardt hopes to see his -- a good test.ore it can go any further out like to an asteroid, there's one big problem, getting it there. the space shuttle won't do the trick. it wasn't designed for deep space missions. and it's simply not safe enough. nasa administrator charlie boldin was a shuttle commander. >> crazy people like me, we'll do anything and we'll fly anything. but in order to expand the capability to bring more people into space flight, we needed a vehicle that had a capability for crews to escape. >> the new crew vehicle, bigger than the old apollo capsules, is already in the works. it will be, nasa says, ten times safer than a shuttle. putting it on top of the rocket, not on the side, gives the astronauts a better chance of surviving an accident. the escape system is already being tested. but to get the crew and all their supplies for a long journey out of the atmosphere, the space agency needs a powerful heavy-lift rocket. it's supposed to be ready by 2016. the first test vehicle might look a bit like this. be

. >> astronaut mike gernhardt and his team are working on the kinds of techniques they need for humanas early as 2025 before either the moon or mars. >> what we are doing is building a simulated asteroid under water. >> reporter: this is not some high-tech laboratory. it's key large owe, florida. beneath the surface at the site of an underneath habitat called the aquarius, they have created an asteroid proving ground in the near weightless environment. >> he we can work there and live there and put anchors and built a rock wall like a climbing wall. we can climb up that wall in zero graph jit with the schultz era over, nasa is going back to going outward. while most everyone agrees, it does best. asteroid could be the first stop, a baby step, because there is no gravity and an asteroid would be much closer, it's simply an easier first mission than mars. so once you get to mars, or the moon or an asteroid, how are you going to get around? well, how about this? a multimission space exploration vehicle. in five years, gernhardt hopes to see his vehicle attached to the space station's rob