The last time NASA scheduled a gap in manned spaceflight -- from Apollo/Soyuz to Shuttle -- it ran over by, oh, about five years. Just one whoopsie late in the shuttle program (after, say, 2007) and I can see them cancelling the whole thing and going straight to CEV. Which will, of course, be late.

CEV is planned to do Apollo-type stuff and act as an orbital crew taxi, which is what the Shuttle ended up doing (despite being specced for a whole lot of much more ambitious stuff). So muttering about a shuttle to the moon isn't necessarily totally daft, if CEV == shuttle ... except that CEV isn't designed to deliver and retrieve KH-11s from polar orbit. Sigh.

I wish ESA would just bite the bullet and upgrade ATV to full man-rated status -- all it needs is a re-entry capsule and an escape tower and it'll be the second coming of the GE Apollo design, and it's already due to launch within the next 12 months.