NASA's new spaceship - updates

UPDATE
Second-to-last question, from a writer from Popular Mechanics: What role with commercial providers (Elon Musk, etc.) play in this new plan? Griffin says he wants to use them if they're available, for servicing of the International Space Station. NASA's ideal job, he says, will be to focus just on expanding human presence outward into space, on exploring. He'd like to leave the routine operations in low Earth orbit (LEO) to private enterprise, if possible.

UPDATE
Griffin saying now that the new vehicle will "have a ten times higher factor for safety" than the shuttle. Says shuttle has 1 chance in 220 of being destroyed on each mission. New vehicle will have 1 chance on 2,000. Easy to see how he got the shuttle safety record, because it's based on actual performance. Don't know how he can figure the safety record for a vehicle that doesn't exists yet.

UPDATE
"This is not new money. This is about a budget that keeps NASA" constant. Also says they won't take money from science programs. That's just plain not true. Money already being cut from NASA science programs like crazy to support this. "We do not take one thin dime" out of exisiting science programs, we take it from manned space programs.

UPDATE
Porcupines mating: Griffin says that's how they'll develop CEV at the same times continuing to run shuttle. "It's like the old joke: How to porcupines mate? Very carefully. We have a transition path from shuttle to shuttle-derived...."

UPDATE
CEV can carry up to 6 astronauts to International Space Station. So it will replace shuttle for crew transfer to ISS.

UPDATE
New vehicle, called the CEV, to come online in 2012. Shuttle to be retired by 2010. Leaves two-year "gap in manned spaceflight capabitilty is inevitable," Griffin says.

UPDATE
Griffin: Where we go on the moon will be largely driven by science.

UPDATE
NASA not going to ask for more money from Congress. Going to take money from existing budget/programs, i.e., shuttle and space station. There's the rub, as far as I can see; NASA's stretched thin now, so I don't see how they're going to keep all three programs running simultaneously.

UPDATE
Blog not updating properly...trying this in a new post:

Griffin: It's very Apollo-like. Think of it as Apollo on steroids. It's 50% bigger than Apollo.

Cost: Much, much more than I thought. Griffin's in Q&A session now. First question, the most obvious one: how much is this gonna cost: $104 billion dollars for the first moon mission with people, spread out of 13 years. Yow.