I don’t want to get carried away, but the Dragon design looks very modular. It looks as if subsystem upgrades for different missions will be relatively inexpensive.

Do we need Orion? At all?

For ISS resupply and other LEO applications, Orion is overkill. I think you’re in agreement on this point.

And in my opinion, Orion isn’t well suited to long-duration missions. It’s just too small. We need something similar to an ISS or Salyut module or to the Bigelow designs for missions that last longer than a few days. Can you imagine sitting in Orion for nine freaking months to get to an asteroid or to Mars? Then doing it again to get home? Not me. People need exercise to stay healthy in zero-gee, and they appreciate a bit of privacy and a place to put their stuff. Even hot-bunking submarine sailors get a kit bag and corridors to walk through and an occasional shower.

That leaves lunar missions, or Lagrange-point missions, for which Orion would be a good fit.

But how much would it cost to upgrade Dragon or the Boeing capsule to this capability, compared to the cost of Orion? I can’t imagine that Orion would be a good bargain by comparison.

Lastly, there’s no funding yet for long-duration missions. It makes no sense to blow money on Orion today when it may take decades to launch a mission that would use it.

Let’s be smart about this and only spend money on stuff we need today, with an eye to future capability where practical. Let’s part out Orion and get as much value as possible from the money we’ve already spent on it, and not spend any more on it unless and until it’s determined that Orion is the best choice for an existing funded mission.

Disclaimer: the above is only my opinion, and I’m nobody in particular.

The NASA bureaucrats at the design reviews for the Dragon & Falcon 9 certainly weren’t there to pass on knowledge of previous accidents and mishaps in a meaningful way. While SpaceX made a few rookie mistakes with the Falcon 1 launches, they have also shown that they do learn from those mistakes and are making significant strides in the development of their vehicles. If anything, it is too bad that there wasn’t a major problem that showed up, as that would have implied an area to learn from in terms of an engineering flaw that was missed. You tend to learn more from your mistakes than from having everything work correctly, but then again it shows that the SpaceX engineers have certainly been doing their homework trying not to repeat the mistakes from the past.

The impressive thing is how Elon Musk has taken a hard review of the costs for access to space and streamlined the part manufacturing and procurement process down to an art. That isn’t a trivial accomplishment by itself, and I look at the amazing thing being the company that is SpaceX and its manufacturing processes as something worthy of emulation. Because of how the Falcon 9 has been put together, it is both cheaper to build and much more reliable than many other rockets that have been built before of that same size and capability. The Falcon 9 as the end-product of that manufacturing process is really amazing, especially as that company now starts to chew through its backlog on its customer manifest.

You’re a pathetic excuse for a space advocate, a corrupt status quo supporter. SpaceX did all the work, NASA did at best nothing and at worst made it harder for them. You should be ashamed for lying about this brilliant accomplishment by Musk and his team.

You are forgetting SNC’s Dreamchaser – I’d say that has decent shot. I know I am probably in the minority on that, but anyway…

Please, give it a shot.

SpaceX spends less than 1/10 what Orion has cost us halfway into its development, orbits its spacecraft years sooner, and you’re pining for Orion?

How obtuse can you possibly be?