Time. Implacable time. Florida. Relentlessly hot and humid August weather, and when not. Twenty years ago this month, a sense of change also hanging thick in the air, a thought this time will be different. Cooler days ahead. The work was over, minus the last of the endless word-smithing for the adrenaline-fueled study to end all studies. In November 2005, NASA finally releases the report. It is the so-anticipated, portions leaked, Exploration Systems Architecture Study. Promise is afoot, or is it only promises? Did I say, twenty years ago? Inside this study is a project, one among many that will form a new direction. That element is the Orion spacecraft, a descendant in the lineage of the capsules a few miles down the road from where I write this, in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. So much thunder and spectacle and all that came back to be placed behind glass in a dim light, so the kids could gawk and ooh and ahh, for about 15 seconds, last time I watched a parade of kids pass one by, was this little tip of the spear. Not even the whole flint piece from the tip. Just a shard.
In the movie described as a slow burn, here is where the writer inserts the dramatic scene, a trope, a setup that’s too often used, because it works every time to great effect if done properly. The lid of a cylindrical chamber opens, a hissing sound as cool, white vapor spills out, lights flicker, electronic beeps and whirs as clamps release. Inside, a person. A close-up, eyes struggling to open, muscles weak. A pained voice asks, “How many years?” The faces look at each other, unsure if they should answer, but they do, “Twenty.” A close-up, a disoriented disbelief at the passage of time. Another struggle to speak, another question, “And how many times has Orion launched astronauts?”
“And how many times has Orion launched astronauts?”
Blank stares. For this question, how to break the news? It may be too much of a shock. Best the popsicle patient time-traveler rests up first. “There is time for all this, later,” says a soothing voice.
Twenty years. But other numbers too. Orion has now (1) cost NASA $24.1 billion (in nominal “then year” dollars, $31.4 billion, adjusting for inflation), and (2) flown into deep space once. Without crew. That’s a lot of NASA’s resources, at least a billion dollars most years, often much more, $1.3 billion last year, and about the same again this year. Twenty years. At the time Orion began, I was about halfway through my career at NASA. But I also know this story, and in a sense, project Orion began long before that.
Orion’s birth pre-dates 2005 by another decade. Yes, another decade, as preposterous as that sounds. I was there throughout it all, as Orion is truly a descendant of -wait for it- Reusable Launch Vehicle efforts of the 1990s. The short version of this story begins by stepping back in time and seeing the Shuttle flying high again, after the loss of the first Shuttle, Challenger. We have here a wondrous machine that failed to deliver on many promises, about cost, or flight rate, or being as safe as advertised, but we have come so far! But not far enough. In this line of thought, the Shuttle is semi-reusable, the salvageable refillable scooped up from the ocean salt water treated Solid Rocket Boosters, and the Shuttle Orbiters that flew back to Earth so gracefully. Naturally, with little debate, what would follow would be fully reusable.
This train of thought continues, a mighty locomotive, now carrying the NASA/SpaceX efforts to make a completely reusable Starship. Yet a curious thing happened as NASA attacked full reusability in the 90s, believing that lessons from the Shuttle program would fix the next time around what had not gone well in the first run. We ended up back at an Apollo-style disposable capsule. NASA went back a generation, not forward.
NASA’s reusable launch efforts in the 90s floundered due to a combination of factors, from the limits of technology to the limits of people and organizations with a mind of their own. In 1995, my work in future programs remained under “Other duties as assigned,” and this distraction was tolerated only so long as I made it clear to my supervisor that my responsibilities in the Shuttle program were unaffected. What’s broke must be fixed. Shuttles must be prepared and launched. Rinse and repeat–we were launching at a steady clip then.
With every update to the Orbital Spaceplane…it got smaller and more expensive.
Still, NASA culture at the time accepted not only a sense of the inevitability of full reuse but also the need for a backup, so as not to rely only on the Shuttle. Full reuse falls by the wayside first. Then, the X-38 and the Orbital Spaceplane Program keep looking at a vehicle for only getting crew to the space station under construction. Tick, tick. Time passing, studies re-hashing studies. With every update to the Orbital Spaceplane, a small crewed reusable mini-Shuttle atop an expendable rocket, it got smaller and more expensive. A joke at the time, as everyone quickly touted out the words “fixed costs,” costs that did not go down with size, was for someone to say, “Let’s make it bigger then. For free.” Though perhaps this was sarcasm. Or frustration at how the Orbital Spaceplane program was going.
In aerospace parlance, a new, smaller transport for crew could have wings, like a shrunken Shuttle, or these might be smushed into an aerodynamic body, or disappearing entirely, you finally had the round one-time-use capsule, again, like in Apollo. The capsule won out. An added benefit is that capsules are ejected from the top of a rocket more easily than those placed on the side or those with a shape that complicates the addition of an escape system.
More time passes. With the loss of NASA’s second Shuttle, Columbia, in February 2003, the die was cast. A fully reusable vehicle in one stage became two, then a small reusable spaceplane atop an expendable rocket, and now that small part morphed into a fully disposable capsule. With an escape system.
NASA is the down-on-its-luck buyer, walking into the dealership obsessing about the minimum down payment.
In the aftermath of that study twenty years ago, came more math. This time, and since 2001, it was now my day-job to work full-time on what things may come. Among the numbers the Orion project needed was an updated sense about what the thing would cost once it was at Kennedy and through launch. Here came the fun part. It turns out that no one really cared much about what this number was, judging by how easily I was assigned my part of this task. There is reason to think the carelessness here came from believing the number could be anything, so long as it was far off. And everything fell under that umbrella. Far off. Numbers that are very far off could just as well be goals, not something anyone can or should estimate, right? This is the kind of task where the room empties out quickly as the job is being described in the lead-up to asking for a volunteer. Anyone? Anyone?
It’s a misunderstanding to think of NASA as if it were an agency in the habit of walking into a car dealership fixated on the monthly payment. Rather, NASA is the down-on-its-luck buyer, walking into the dealership obsessing about the minimum down payment. Monthly payments – that’s far off, next month. Needless to say, my initial cost estimate, as well as that of many others, identified potential costs for Orion everywhere. Typically, this could be easily addressed by the program listing everything it would do differently this time, but no one would commit to such a list of promises. Not surprisingly, NASA would not “commit” to any up-front cost estimate for Orion until 2015, ten years after the start of the program.
The short of it was that Orion was a project consumed by the existing Space Shuttle orbiter organizations, not only at Kennedy, but throughout NASA. Which is to say there would not be much change in costs between a reusable Space Shuttle, 122 feet long, and a disposable Orion, 16.5 feet in diameter. (A line in that 2005 report brushes off this possibility, alluding to costs “independent of the launch architecture.”)
And here we are. Twenty years. On Orion’s debut flight to the Moon in 2022, with no crew and no life support system, the heat shield behaved poorly. Still, NASA intends to put a crew on the very next flight, back to orbit the Moon. The rationale for this is beyond nebulous. The common-sense notion that a full-up Orion, with life support, and all other systems as intended when crew are present, again go “uncrewed” on a lunar flyby and back, and perform as expected, is now undone by a rush to launch with crew. Not that there wasn’t ample time till now to fly more tests without crew, many more. Or enough funds. Twenty years of time.
And now here we are in the year 2025 – hears the astronaut awakened from deep sleep in that movie. It sounds like the future. Yet news – the current Whitehouse plans are to scrap the Orion spacecraft project after all. After the first Moon landing, that is. The Artemis II mission will take a crew to orbit around the Moon. Then, the Artemis III mission will be a Moon landing, which requires a fully reusable, refillable Starship lunar lander. Then, well, there is no “then” for Orion, or the rocket it rides on, SLS. At the current pace, it’s not a stretch to say a Moon landing would be well past the planned date of 2027. Years past. Oddly, after this milestone, NASA will be left with a fully reusable launch vehicle – Starship. Though before NASA has gone full circle, it would make sense if Orion can do one more circle round the block too, without crew. After all, why the rush.
Zapata Talks NASA 