NASA picks “Orion-like” spacecraft

Lockeed-Martin has been selected to design and build a new manned spacecraft. The craft will be very much like Orion—a spacecraft that has already been designed and built and tested and paid for.

Lockheed-Martin will create a multi-purpose crew vehicle that looks and works very much like Orion

How does that make sense? NASA is underfunded—but was forced to cancel Constellation, a program using Orion and a booster (called Ares) which was under development. We were told that the program was a failure, because Ares had problems. So did the Saturn V. This IS rocket science, and there are always engineering problems to be solved. But instead of being allowed to solve them, NASA engineers were stopped.

In a sane world, NASA would be working on finishing the Constellation hardware. Instead, Orion was purposely crippled (now it’s only an escape pod for the International Space Station) and Ares is dead. NASA has been ordered to built, as quickly as possible, a heavy launch vehicle like Ares. But it can’t be Ares.

NASA always gets the blame, but the problem is clearly interfering politicians. Lockheed-Martin is a company with talented engineers. They are fully qualified to built a new manned spacecraft. But why are we starting over?! We are throwing away all the work done on Constellation. With budgets allegedly so tight, why are we doing this?

Update (and additional thoughts)

Now I’m hearing that Orion has been restored to use for deep space manned flight. All of this is confusing. As far as I can tell, 1) The NAME Orion is dead; 2) The same spacecraft has been re-named and will now be used for the purposes it was developed and, possibly 3) The prime contractor for Orion may become the owner of the spacecraft that NASA requested and paid for.

I think we might have another example of public funds being used for “free” enterprise. I hope I’m wrong about this…but the news has been vague and confusing.