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Can someone explain to me why NASA did not use Orion to get crew to the ISS?

• 51Cards 6y ago
  In a nutshell it comes down to two things. A. It's not ready to fly yet. And B. it's not really built for that purpose. Sort of like taking an RV to the corner store. You can do it but it's expensive, bulky, and over-built.
• bryanlarsen 6y ago
  - Orion doesn't have the necessary docking adapter. - Orion costs well over $1 billion per capsule, plus almost another $2 billion for the SLS rocket to ride on. In total that's more than the $2.6B they paid SpaceX for NRE + 6 flights. (NRE on Orion was $20billion and SLS will be even more) - The SLS rocket isn't ready yet. - Boeing can't build more than one SLS per year.
  • kanox 6y ago
    > Orion doesn't have the necessary docking adapter. NASA actually enforced a standard docking systems for all capsules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Docking_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Docking_System . In theory it's androgynous so it might even be possible to dock capsules to each other. Orion is extremely heavy (26 tons fully fueled) so it would need a Falcon Heavy or D4 Heavy. This would make it very expensive. It's also politics: since the early 2010s SLS has been the only "supported" vehicle for Orion thus tying the two programs together.
• deleted 6y ago
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