The Crew Exploration Vehicle project that is intended to take man to the moon again has a name and logo: Orion.

A proposed logo of the CEV project with the name "Orion" and marked "approved" has been seen in an internal NASA document. Other reports have NASA applying for trademark protection for "Orion." The Orion constellation features on the logo, along with a blue globe and red orbital vector.

This is the latest nomenclature to be associated with NASA's space exploration programs. The entire moonshot project (as well as the Mars exploration mission) is codenamed "Constellation", with Orion associated with the CEV component. "Ares" refers to the launch vehicle family (Ares I being the crew launcher and Ares V the heavy-lift launcher). Prior reports had NASA designating the separate command/service module and moon lander as "Altair" and "Artemis", respectively, until superceded by this report.

We already assumed that there would be major setbacks to the scientific community with the (nasty) budget cut NASA received, but we never really though the impact would be as bad as the Space Frontier Foundation says it would be.

This space advocacy group has just submitted its assessment regarding NASA's space exploration plans - and what they're saying is far from good. Titled "Unaffordable and Unsustainable - NASA's failing Earth-to-Orbit Transportation Strategy," this, for one, calls for the immediate elimination of work on Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) block 1 and for the delay of Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) program.

The CEV Block 1 has been designed for ISS missions, which according to the group should be handed to private space firms.

According to Space Frontiers Foundation, NASA should also be considering taking more private partners if they intend to continue with space exploration. The agency should buy a service from US companies, as NASA doesn't have the capability to build, develop and operate crew or cargo missions anymore.

Space Frontier Foundation is also calling for the government to transfer $2B to $3B to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program which currently has a budget of just $500M until 2010. This will result to additional COTS competition, promoting six to eight more contracts.

Their major concern, according to Space Frontier Foundation's co-founder Rick Tumlinson, is that science might also suffer if NASA's incapability (budget, engineering, space access systems) starts to affect space exploration.

NASA appears to have moon fever again and its rising. If they can get their way, NASA wants humans hopping on the moon again as early as 2015 and no later than 2020.

NASA's fascination with earth's only satellite means a lot of work has to be done. Among them, getting the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) off the ground by 2014 . The CEV is one of the element of the Constellation Systems needed to return earthlings to the Moon and eventually Mars.

Next on the list is the Lunar Lander. “The lunar lander is probably the least well-developed of any of those pieces of infrastructure that the government plans to provide,” said John Connolly, Manager of NASA's Lunar Lander Pre-Project Constellation Program Office. “We don’t know what the lander quite looks like yet... where it has to go or what it has to do.”

Last month NASA issued a request to explore diverse sets of lunar lander design configurations from outside the agency to find more innovative solutions for lunar surface missions.

Harrison Schmitt, former Apollo 17 astronaut and current chair of NASA Advisory Council is busy strengthening the ties between the science community and NASA exploration officials to help influence the new lunar lander design. He predicts the Moon will be a busy science center with geophysical sensors studying the Moon's interior ands observatories for the solar system and the universe. Schmitt also sees the Moon as a rehearsal for Martian exploration.

Given NASA's not so deep pocket, how does the agency plan to fund its second wave of Moon invasion? NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), headed by Scott Horowitz, another ex-space cowboy, is relying on “Safe, sustained, affordable human and robotic exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond ... for less than one percent of the federal budget.”

NASA has begun focusing on its to-do list once on the Moon, including getting all the pieces of hardware in place. “We need to lay that infrastructure…first at the Moon and then to Mars…for the scientists and the commercial developers to follow. That is the fundamental role of government…to pay for things too expensive for anybody else to afford,” Connolly observed. “Also, the role of the government is to get out of the way when those other folks show up.”