The Wait Is Over: NASA Unveils New CEV

To paraphrase Bill Murray in the movie, Stripes: NASA is getting themselves an RV!

Check out the plans for the next generation Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) compliments of those engineering giants at NASA.
The amazing part about the entire program (to me at least) is just how similar to Apollo program stuff it is. In fact, Mike Griffin was quoted saying "Think of it as Apollo on steroids"; a heavy-lifting rocket, a command capsule and lunar Lander, all built bigger and stronger then the stuff we used three decades ago, but no less familiar. Cargo travels in a separate launch and docks with the ship once in orbit. Time to the Moon, about three days. Also, the Lander contains a base that remains on the lunar surface to act as a future living space, an idea I thought of just last week, not that anyone bothered to ask me.
NASA announced the new CEV design today to coincide with the release of its plans to place astronauts on the Moon in 2018.

Of course they only briefly mention the fact this ship won't be ready until 2012 and the shuttles will definitely not be running after 2010, if they get back to flight status at all, leaving a two-year gap. So for the first time in FIFTY years, we will be without a Space fleet. For two years we will rely on other nations for access to Space.
The plan makes no mention of a Mars mission and Griffin declined to discuss it.
I can't help thinking we could do it better, faster and not have a gap of two years without a viable Spacecraft, but I am not smart enough to be the one to make that happen.
Maybe one of the engineers who work for Burt Rutan or Elon Musk or any one of the dozens of other teams currently working in the private sector to make Space travel available for all of humanity, not just a chosen few, will think of something better.

Maybe it'll even be one the guys at 4Frontiers Corp. They also announced a grand plan today, but unlike NASA they intend to go to Mars in about 25 years. Not sure how they're getting there yet but they seem intent on going nonetheless.