What’s With Orion?

Orion: NASA's once and future manned spacecraft

There’s nothing I’d rather see than a NASA built Orion spacecraft take astronauts beyond earth orbit. They could go to an asteroid, to Mars, wherever. But NASA would be breaking new ground, stretching the human frontier again. The space agency did a great job operating the complex, dangerous and (I think) fatally flawed space shuttle for a few decades. This is true despite the two tragedies—such a vehicle couldn’t possibly be flown for 35 years by humans without fatal accidents.

NASA has been expanding our view of the universe with complex and successful missions, including Mars missions. Not so long ago, Mars was a graveyard to spacecraft. But NASA has become good at it, and Curiosity (fingers crossed!) should further demonstrate NASA’s ability to execute very difficult assignments. (Sadly, the Russians are still having problems with their Mars missions—with their latest failure expected to return to Earth in a fireball sometime this weekend.)

And now there’s Orion. First, it was George W. Bush’s plans to beef up human space exploration. But he didn’t provide much funding. Then, Barack Obama killed the program. Congress attacked NASA for cost overruns and other imagined failures. Congress failed to understand that rocketry is difficult and trying new things involves unknown costs and unpredictable dangers. If it were a popularity contest, Congress would lose and NASA would win. But Congress controls the purse strings.

Somehow, NASA was given the go-ahead again and Orion was re-named and restored. (I still call it Orion.) Still, funding is tight and the long-term budget required for such a project is not guaranteed. The Ares launcher remains dead (although the Ares Ix flew a successful test), and a new rocket, called SLS, is being developed. Is it just another name for a revived Ares? I don’t think so, but at this point it’s impossible to tell.

All I have now is questions: What will the mission of the new Orion be? They say a trip to an asteroid, but nobody says it convincingly. Who’s responsible for design? Boeing or NASA? If it’s Boeing, could the aerospace company launch Orion spacecraft for private companies? What will the crew size be for the new Orion? We hear that it may have different configurations. Again, this sounds like evasion or uncertainty. You can’t create real spacecraft with vague plans; you need to have specific specs.

I think NASA is in a very difficult political position, and that they know it. Navigating the conflicting signals of the U.S. Government is more difficult for them than navigating to the stars. I’m rooting for NASA to be given the green light and the budget to match.