Orion

Construction in slow motion; Bob Zimmerman notes the snail’s pace:

Orion’s budget these days is about $1 billion per year, with a total cost expected to reach $17 billion by the time the fourth capsule is built and launched in 2023, for a project first proposed in 2004.

In other words, it will take NASA and Lockheed Martin almost 20 years to build four capsules for the cost of $17 billion. That is absurd. Compare it to commercial space: The entire budget for all the commercial crew contracts, including both cargo contracts and the manned contract, is about half that, and will produce four different vehicles, all of which will be built and flying by 2019 at the latest. And in the case of Dragon and Cygnus, more than a dozen capsules have already flown.

Is there no one in Washington with the brain power to read these numbers and come to a rational decision about SLS/Orion? It costs too much and isn’t getting us into space. Moreover, at its pace and cost it isn’t doing anything to help the American aerospace industry. Better for Congress to put money into other things, or save it entirely and reduce the deficit and thus not waste it on this pork barrel garbage.

It’s not about building a capsule, or going to Mars. Or even beyond earth orbit.

16 thoughts on “Orion”

  1. Even if we set aside the fiscal and timescale issues, Orion is still utterly preposterous from a mission perspective.

    The issue is mass (a rather important thing in spaceflight). Orion is very heavy, largely because it’s a reentry vehicle. It is, however, far too small and has insufficient life support to serve as a hab for a long duration mission. So, why haul along (at enormous delta/v costs) a huge mass like Orion? All that’s really needed is a small, light reentry vehicle big enough to hold and support the crew for a few hours (such as the reentry potion of Soyuz, 3 tons, though of course that couldn’t do a reentry from interplanetary velocities).

    Instead, they want to haul an Orion capsule massing 11 tons (for the capsule alone), all the way to Mars (or anywhere else BEO) and back? This is, and always was, madness.

    Even Dragon is IMHO a bit heavy for that role, at about 5 tons, but 5 tons is one heck of a lot less than 11, at least where I come from.

    So, from a spaceflight perspective, Orion is and always was absurd. However, as a implement of corruption (pork) it works, which is why it exists.

      1. Well, Orion did have a stretch goal of being able to do an entry for Martian return, as well as 6 ISS crew transfer/escape, ISS cargo transfer, and the 4 person cislunar mission.

        The total costs have gone up as things got stretched out (a problem across government, not just NASA) and as NASA added more and more civil service as STS and ISS ramped down.

        I’ve worked on a number of government projects and the only ones that were done within budget and original timeframe were ones without any significant congressional oversight. Everything else got stretched. If anyone was able to put together a direct comparison of public and black programs, I think they would find the black programs had better time and budget results.

        1. According to Josh Hopkins, it can only return from Mars in very restricted trajectories. In any event, NASA isn’t considering that any more in the Evolved Mars Architecture. It’s cislunar only.

          1. Since my name was invoked, I’d like to clarify this statement.

            Orion TPS is capable of returning from Mars using “very restricted trajectories” with the TPS as it’s built today for the Moon with no modification whatsoever. The most benign Mars return trajectories are similar to the worst lunar return cases it’s already designed for. You can make the spacecraft can handle a much broader range of Mars return trajectories by increasing the thickness of the Avcoat a bit, which was planned into the design of the interfaces. You may also need to change a few of the tiles on the backshell.

            We’ve looked at Orion TPS, duration capability, radiation tolerance, and other aspects, and found no reason why you couldn’t take Orion to Mars along with the other mission elements you would need.

  2. There is one thing the government can do very well. Blow through a lot of money. Luckily there is a few things in life where you don’t want something to make money. Law enforcement and military spending come to mind. I don’t want Officer Bob to make a profit if he can “find” evidence to convict me. So the first question I usually ask is “I am willing to pay 10 times the price to make sure someone in Washington has control of this.”

    1. Luckily there is a few things in life where you don’t want something to make money. Law enforcement and military spending come to mind.

      I know a number of police officers, as well as military officers. They all make money by performing their jobs.

      I suppose you could say that CCW holders are law enforcement that doesn’t make money, but they don’t work for the government.

      I don’t want Officer Bob to make a profit if he can “find” evidence to convict me.

      Whether you want it or not, police departments *do* profit from seizing “criminal” assets. According to Armstrong Economics and the Washington Post, police and Federal law enforcement now seize more private property each year than all burglaries combined ($4.5B vs $3.9B). Agencies usually get to keep the property they seize.

      1. If Officer Bob gets to drive around in a new Ferrari because he made an arrest (he doesn’t even need to get a conviction), then he has profited. The fact that he does not declare it on his income tax is irrelevant.

        1. Officer Bob doesn’t drive a Ferrari unless he is from a wealthy family, or he’s a fictional officer on Miami Vice.

  3. Tempted to calculate if it would be cheaper as a golden statue of itself.

    (Wanders off to look up estimated dry mass)

    1. At a current price of $1100 an ounce an 11.45 ton Orion made of gold would contain $403,040,000.00 of gold.

      $17 billion would supply enough gold for 42 golden Orions.

    1. Great comment!

      Actually, it isn’t at all surprising that progress is so slow. $1 billion a year is equivalent to $125 million a year in 1965 dollars. Spending on Apollo was two orders of magnitude higher than that. And in the Apollo days, the gates through which one had to pass prior to, say, making a weld, were far fewer.

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