Leading aerospace contractors are eagerly awaiting NASA's multi-billion dollar decision on who'll build the space agency's follow-on to the space shuttle now set for retirement in 2010. Flying NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) by 2014 is vital to what's dubbed the Constellation Systems--the spaceship, boosters and interrelated hardware needed to tend the International Space Station, return to the Moon by 2020, and plant footprints on Mars in future years. Will it be Lockheed Martin or the team of Northrop Grumman/Boeing--each group partnered with a cast of all-star subcontractors--that will work with NASA to field the space agency's first new human...