When NASA administrator Michael Griffin unveiled the agency's plans for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), he described it as "Apollo on steroids." The resemblance is easy to seeeach is a blunt-nosed, cone-shaped capsule that's strapped to a rocket and sent to the moon, where it deploys a lunar lander and then returns to Earth for a parachute landing. There are important differences, however:

It's a scene reminiscent of NASA's glory days, back when men still walked on the moon. A space capsule descends under a canopy of three orange-and-blue parachutes, swaying gently in the breeze. The spacecraft splashes down in the Pacific at a leisurely 15 miles an hour, and the chutes settle into the water beside it. A recovery boat rumbles into position beside the spacecraft, and divers hit the water.

The space shuttle may be in the best shape of its life, but in the forward-looking world of space travel, it's a grizzled senior citizenwith mandatory retirement looming in 2010. The race is on to develop a replacement.Still on the drawing board, NASA's next-generation spacecraft will be called the "Crew" Exploration Vehicle, or CEV. It's expected to begin carrying astronauts to low-Earth orbit by 2014 and to the moon by 2020.Eleven aerospace-industry teams are vying for two NASA contracts to develop CEV concepts; the winners will be announced by early September.