Once unthinkable, NASA and Lockheed now consider launching Orion on other rockets: “We’re trying to crawl, then walk, then run into our reuse strategy.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/once-unthinkable-nasa-and-lockheed-now-consider-launching-orion-on-other-rockets/?utm_campaign=dhtwitter&utm_content=%3Cmedia_url%3E&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
13 Comments
I heard there are some Chinese rockets that they can probably buy.
This was only unthinkable in Congress. It was blindingly obvious everywhere else.
Swill from the greatest circus ringleader in the yellow journalism sector.
Stick the thing on an expendable Starship and Superheavy and be done with it
The clickbait gymnstics are impressive. Lockheed is trying to change Orion’s contracting model from their side to survive government turbulence, and solidifying plans to reuse components ***of the capsule*** – and Eric joins those together to make it look like Lockheed’s representative was talking directly about putting Orion on a Super Heavy-derived launch vehicle or something. Someone get this man a gold medal – shaped, preferably, like a crap emoji.
I’m waiting for the Orion launching in the cargo bay of the Starship
just stick the damn capsule on a super heavy falcon where the center rocket is expendable and the side boosters are recovered.
How many years the Orion project has been running? 15 years ?
Say it! Say his name!!
Say the name of the rockets that NASA is going to use!
Acknowledge that NASA with its $Billions of waste can’t even get to Space anymore without the ONE company they have repeatedly tried to squash and put out if business.
Similar to Deep Space Transport LLC, I don’t see any sign of a viable business plan.
Orion costs $950 million to manufacture for Artemis, the service module that can’t be reused costs $650 million.
Orion weighs 35t, this means only Falcon Heavy or New Glenn could launch Orion and even then they can only get the vehicle to Low Earth Orbit.
This means Orion would need to compete with the $350 million crewed Dragon and $450 million Starliner price tags. Assuming a $150 Rocket Launch cost, Orion Capsule Refurbishment and a new Service Module can’t cost more than $300 million, that means they need to achieve a 50%-60% cost reduction.
From a deep space perspective there was a cool idea of stacking Orion on a Centaur V on Falcon Heavy. Such a stack would cost ~$1.3 billion per launch which is similar to the HLS and Blue Moon mission cost.
If we are being Kerbal its actually cheaper to launch Gateway and attach a Centaur V to it to use to transfer to Low Lunar Orbit and back.
In reality Orion is a far bigger capsule than you will ever need for transfer to LEO and that size adds extreme cost and for any deep space mission you will need a multi launch archecture and Orion as a single launch solution is far smaller and more expensive than a multi launch approach.
Is it really so unthinkable? Orion works. Perhaps not perfectly, but Orion isn’t SLS. Orion is a big fat standard-issue command module that can deorbit eight astronauts in an emergency. It’s only logical to make SpaceX and BLO build compatible interfaces into it, in the event it’s needed as an escape capsule for the *six day* round trip from the moon. And by detaching Orion from SLS, NASA stands a real chance of being able to just slot Orion-compatible flagship missions into launch services.
Reusability would be nice though, but NASA would only reuse Orion capsules if they have to actually come down from orbit. This probably won’t be necessary by the 2050s when there’s enough private space airlines to handle it, and Orion can be the Earth-Moon and Earth-Mars human escape and command pod.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[ATV](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njpb4az “Last usage”)|[Automated Transfer Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle), ESA cargo craft|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[EMU](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njp7jom “Last usage”)|Extravehicular Mobility Unit (spacesuit)|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njp8940 “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njp7jom “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njpbg90 “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LES](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njoxw35 “Last usage”)|Launch Escape System|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njp7jom “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1o7mkmf/stub/njp31ef “Last usage”)|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
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The Starship system is not designed for it, nor is the block 3 capable of it, even with a large cargo door and stripping out all the landing hardware to make it expendable… and making the required changes would take longer than building Artemis 4… even though it would likely be an order of magnitude cheaper to somehow pack Orion and a fully fueled centaur V in one and transfer crew from. Falcon launched Dragon.