My scifi has to deal with development of terraforming, and I want to name the Project after a philosopher. Is there a philosopher or writer who has to deal with renewing or change or rebirth, something like that?
Samsara is the cycle of rebirth in Buddhist philosophy. Bear in mind that in Buddhism, the idea is to liberate yourself from the cycle of rebirth. As far as western thought goes, change is addressed by a LOT of guys and gals over the years, because change is one of the things that any theory of reality has to account for. Heraclitus famously said "you can't step into the same river twice." Spinoza liked to talk about change as the process of things combining in order to find optimal configurations (sorry, any real philosophers out there, for the violence I just did to Spinoza). Plato had a theory of rebirth (but it was only mentioned in passing in the Phaedo), so did Ducasse (although Ducasse was a parapsychologist in addition to a philosopher, and that makes me uncomfortable) and J.M.E. McTaggart (although McTaggart thought that reality consisted only of souls, so maybe not what you are looking for). Also, Samsara sounds cool.
I was going to suggest one of the Indian gods rather than a philospoher, like Brahma or Vishnu (I'm not too up on them, so you'd need to see which one fit your story best).
I was also going to suggest the Indian god Genesha. Very powerful god: the god of new beginnings. Vishnu is also a god of recreation and has a history of being thought of by wise men at world changing event. Robert Oppenheimer famously said this about watching the first atomic bomb: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'" Just to mention though that scientists tend to name things after other scientists. The first major planetary operation will almost certainly be called "Sagan."
No philosophers unless you count Jesus. But there's always Buddhists priests. How about Ruach. It's the Hebrew for "breath of life"
I've had to do a lot of research on Jainism for my own book and they have a really interesting concept of time cycles that might interest you with a lot of terms and labels that might fit your project depending on its implications. Basically they believe that time is a wheel that rotates through different eras, each with a level of happiness and unhappiness - starting with an era that is all happiness, working successively through five phases until it reaches a point that's all misery. Then it goes backward through all the phases and until it's all happiness again (they believe we live in the second-worst era - mostly sorrow with very little happiness - and that there's one era even worse than this one before everything starts swinging upward.) Anyway - I found that cycle interesting because is has qualitative good/bad component instead of just being constant repeat. It's fun to mine for symbolism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_cosmology#Time_cycle
Why not simply make up a philosopher, and add a little context? Or use a well known dead Sci-Fi author instead? Like Jules Verne or something to that effect. (When one door closes, find a new one. If you have exhausted all your doors, and are locked up. Then you will figure out new ways of looking at things, and how to unlock a door. Remember there is more than one way to skin a cat, you know.)
I like Myrrdoch's suggestion: Project Robertson, or if your main character is an Aussie, Project Robbo. Or there is that oldie-but-goodie once used in a Star Trek movie, "Project Genesis". A Google seach for "gods associated with change" threw up "Janus" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus
