NASA has unveiled their long-term plan to introduce a new ship into spaceflight and, if all goes well, establish a base on the moon.  The organization will be retiring the current space shuttle fleet in favor of a new "Crew Exploration Vehicle," shaped like the old Apollo capsule (how uncool is that?) but three times larger.  Ready for routine missions to the International Space Station by 2010 or so, the CEV will be launched with an external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters much larger than the ones that launched the Discovery.  In case of a launch emergency an "escape rocket"--an ejection seat of sorts, can jettison the crew away from the rocket.  In all the new spaceship system will be composed of four parts:  1} The heavy-lift rocket system; 2}  The CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle), a reusable ship which will carry the astronauts to and from the moon; 3} The "departure stage" rocket, responsible for the propelling the CEV out of earth orbit and towards the moon, and 4}  a disposable lunar lander.  After landing on the moon and completing their exploration work (which looks vague at this point), the astronauts would reenter the lunar lander, a portion of which would blast back up into moon orbit, and dock with the orbiting CEV.  Then the CEV would return to earth and parachute either on land or water.

Neat, huh?  Do you think everything will work the first time?  (Hey, NASA should go open-source with this space mission business and let some high school math whiz geeks help them out with their figures.  And I'm sure there are some engineers out there who'd donate their time to checking potential sensor issues. . .)