Find a POD: Orion doesn't survive the cancellation of the Constellation program

So I've been playing around with a conceptual 2010s spaceflight timeline, and the big change is that Orion is cancelled with Constellation, and NASA starts a "Commercial Exploration Program" for commercial lunar crew capsules (SPOILER: They pick Dragon and Starliner). This leads to less money "wasted" on Orion, more money spent on commercial spaceflight providers; I'm sure you can see the butterflies writing themselves.

The problem is that I'm not actually sure how to get Orion cancelled in the first place. As I understand it, Orion WAS cancelled with Constellation in OTL, but congress revived it when they mandated SLS (please correct me if that's not quite right). So should I actually be asking what needs to happen to not get Orion revived? Why exactly was Orion revived? I've been able to find and read and watch a lot about the series of events that led from Constellation to SLS, but I've seen very little about Orion, so any help would be appreciated.

2010, as a year in the history of American spaceflight, is fascinating to me, if you hadn't figured that out between this and the Ares I thread. It just seems to be an obvious inflection point.
 
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So I've been playing around with a conceptual 2010s spaceflight timeline, and the big change is that Orion is cancelled with Constellation, and NASA starts a "Commercial Exploration Program" for commercial lunar crew capsules (SPOILER: They pick Dragon and Starliner). This leads to less money "wasted" on Orion, more money spent on commercial spaceflight providers; I'm sure you can see the butterflies writing themselves.

"Self-writing butterflies" I think I've found my next investment pitch :)

Let me shoot out some background of Orion which I hope will be helpful. Lockheed got the Orion contract as sort-of/kind-of a consolation prize after winning the "Orbital Space Plane" competition and then Congress not funding the program. Congress essentially gave NASA, (Griffen) permission to give Boeing's "loosing" capsule design from the OSP program, (which even Lockheed openly admitted was actually what the NASA requirements rather than desires of the program met better than either of their designs) to Lockheed to build while Boeing would be given "something" to do for Constellation. This was "Orion" and flowed from the initial Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) requirement. Essentially "Starliner" is Boeing's original OSP/CEV design so it might be a bit 'awkward' to award that back to Boeing after they already gave it to Lockheed since Lockheed could, (with some squinting) claim they could 'just' make a "commercial" version of Orion and bid that and have Congress/NASA go for it.

The other problem is both NASA and to a lesser extent Congress were pretty much opposed to "Commercial Crew" let alone Commercial Cargo at this point since both didn't fill the perceived 'need' for a Government designed, built and run manned space effort. "Orbit" was hard enough i think Lunar and "exploration" are not going to get any traction till later. In this case it was always pretty clear that "Commercial" simply meant someone ferrying government astronauts to and from the ISS and frankly prior to it being canceled NASA and Congress simply figure it would mean Boeing or Lockheed not some outsider like SpaceX. (And Griffen was adamant that you really didn't need Ares 1 or any "orbital" capability since the ISS would be abandoned by the US anyway. Congress balked at this but weren't really in a position to offer anything better so they simply declared the ISS a national 'asset/laboratory' and mandated its support. Griffen knuckled under but was never happy with the idea)

I'm guessing that without Lockheed having an 'official' Orion program then it would get a nod to make a "commercial" version and you'd have that instead of Starliner with Boeing being content to build the launchers under ULA?

The problem is that I'm not actually sure how to get Orion cancelled in the first place. As I understand it, Orion WAS cancelled with Constellation in OTL, but congress revived it when they mandated SLS (please correct me if that's not quite right). So should I actually be asking what needs to happen to not get Orion revived? Why exactly was Orion revived? I've been able to find and read and watch a lot about the series of events that led from Constellation to SLS, but I've seen very little about Orion, so any help would be appreciated.

Essentially correct but as Orion, (like SLS) was more about directing money, (and in theory jobs) to specific areas you have to have a good, solid and plausible reason for Congress to be sensible :) Good luck with that :p

Seriously I'd suggest that Orrin Hatch is not elected in 2006 or earlier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch#Electoral_history) as a possibility. Without him (and the Utah delegation lobbying) there's more conflict about the basic design of the SLS and such in-fighting could lead to no real progress on direction and funding of SLS and therefore Orion as there was OTL. Hatch was very proud, (and loud) about his lobbying for the SLS to use SRB's and essentially overrode a weak opposition for alternative boosters that was threatening to slow the authorization. (This would later become firmer and funding was provided by supporters of the development of LRBs to oppose his 2012 re-election campaign but it was arguably too late) Mike Lee was to new to have any base of support and no one else had his time/connections in office so without him it's likely that SLS authorization is greatly watered down and Orion with it.

2010, as a year in the history of American spaceflight, is fascinating to me,

Well it is the year we make contact after all :)

if you hadn't figured that out between this and the Ares I thread. It just seems to be an obvious inflection point.

it's a good one but the underlying complexities of 'government' versus 'commercial' are a bit opaque at the best of times. I said it jokingly but essentially you have to provide a valid reason for Congress to suddenly NOT be concerned with jobs/money going into certain places which OTL was the major driver of Constellation/Orion morphing into SLS/Orion. Get enough delays and false-starts and it's going to be obvious that NASA and the US is going to need something pretty soon but in the grand scheme of things Congress (and NASA) can afford to 'wait' as long as it takes to get it done the way they want it to be done.

IIRC wasn't there a slight revival of interest in orbital research in the early 2010s? Maybe have that also get some additional traction to push Dragon/Something else a bit more?

Randy
 
The other problem is both NASA and to a lesser extent Congress were pretty much opposed to "Commercial Crew" let alone Commercial Cargo at this point since both didn't fill the perceived 'need' for a Government designed, built and run manned space effort. "Orbit" was hard enough i think Lunar and "exploration" are not going to get any traction till later. In this case it was always pretty clear that "Commercial" simply meant someone ferrying government astronauts to and from the ISS and frankly prior to it being canceled NASA and Congress simply figure it would mean Boeing or Lockheed not some outsider like SpaceX.

I understand and had considered that. For context, I had been figuring that while Orion is cancelled, SLS still happens (pretty much explicitly because I didn't want to mess with elections in Utah), and the plan is essentially to use the SLS like Ares V (uncrewed), and replace Orion and Ares I with commercial vehicles launched on a commercial LVs. So the justification is that all the commercial "exploration" vehicle actually has to do is simply ferry government astronauts to a departure stage in LEO, so really it's not that different from commercial crew.

That would be the pitch from the Administration anyway. The reality of course is that, for safety reasons, the commercial crew vehicle is kept around throughout all of whatever deep space mission might be attempted, and the requirements NASA issues say it has to be rated for lunar+ reentries, as well as have a large amount of delta-V which coincidentally is enough to return itself to Earth from LLO. But congress overlooks details like that all the time, so I figured I could plausibly say they got away with it.

Do we know who actually put Orion into the bill? Giving some Texas or Colorado Senator other priorities seems like a much better approach than messing with Hatch.
 
Do we know who actually put Orion into the bill? Giving some Texas or Colorado Senator other priorities seems like a much better approach than messing with Hatch.

Drive-by reply :)

I don't think it was 'explicitly' re-started it was just generally assumed that the SLS would need to carry government passengers in something so Orion was there by de-fault. It's essentially the whole underlying 'reasoning' that "Commercial" wasn't actually going to BE commercial because the customer was going to be the government anyway. That the commercial efforts were going to out-pace the government one was something that you'd think would have been obvious but apparently wasn't. So you have commercial vehicles flying before the government one by the simple expedient that the government LV has little incentive to fly while the commercial ones actually do.

And so here we are. The only reason I suggested Hatch is he's low-hanging fruit as ATK/Thiokol had plenty of other lobbyist but the Utah delegation is always going to be the front runner. Having the folks from Alabama and Florida (LRB lobby) being more organized and willing to take up the fight earlier could delay the full SLS authorization but I'm not sure how you don't get funding for Orion in most cases because as I said it was kind of assumed by everyone from the start.

If there is a government designed and built LV it will have a government designed and built crew vehicle on it, is essentially just a continuation of how the US program , (and frankly all the government programs) has always been run. I get the feeling, seeing all the comments about the "commercial" lunar lander program that far to many people don't understand it's NOT what most of them think it is. While it IS actually very different than what's been previously done by NASA it's not that different than any other government funded vehicle development program in that the end use is still going to be the US government, not a commercial entity. (Some people get rather outraged when I point out that if the US government pays for SpaceX to build a Lunar Starship then the GOVERNMENT, not SpaceX is going to operate and control it :) )

Too many people think the government is planning on using Dragon, (and eventually Starliner) as the main transport to and from orbit and that's true to an extent. But the OFFICIAL position is that these are actually backups for SLS/Orion and not the other way around. To get Orion dropped for good you pretty much have to lose SLS, and even then it's likely without a clear mandate from Congress it will probably still be kept on life-support with the aim to use a "commercial" booster to launch it.

You're very correct that the early 'teens' of this century is/are/was a pivotal point, the problem is we HAVE been pivoting and quite radically in some ways compared to before :) Getting any MORE of a radical change is tricky.

Another thing I'll bring up is something you said in that:
For context, I had been figuring that while Orion is cancelled, SLS still happens (pretty much explicitly because I didn't want to mess with elections in Utah), and the plan is essentially to use the SLS like Ares V (uncrewed), and replace Orion and Ares I with commercial vehicles launched on a commercial LVs. So the justification is that all the commercial "exploration" vehicle actually has to do is simply ferry government astronauts to a departure stage in LEO, so really it's not that different from commercial crew.

The split between Ares V and Ares i was artificial and frankly not well supported by either NASA or Congress (except for specific and very focused reasons on both sides, go figure, politics is complicated :) ) because it was very different than any NASA planning for expanded missions. Obviously since it was originally supposed to JUST be the Ares V doing Mars Direct-type missions. The Ares 1 got added in to support orbital operations and the ISS, which again NASA in the form of Griffen was opposed to but Congress insisted. Constellation as a whole was not supposed to even do anything in orbit and would only visit the Moon to verify the hardware for Mars, (If that) so an orbital crew vehicle made no sense. Congress thought otherwise so Ares 1 came about and was justified with splitting the crew from the deep space payload. Piled on top was the basic NASA aversion to split missions and orbital infrastructure building which is pretty institutional (yet oddly also a constant concept with NASA) if they can do an "Apollo" type program instead and I suspect you can see why Orion went from Ares 1 to SLS so easily.

This is especially a problem with SLS/Orion because it was rather obvious that SLS wasn't going to be anything on the level of the Ares V even with the 'mandate' inserted by Hatch and company.
Something to keep in mind is that the payload was specified NOT for any mission requirements but to ensure that SLS would use SRBs. Period. LRBs would arguably be cheaper and more efficient but essentially Hatch-et-al were 'assured' by "experts", (no prize for guessing who they were :) ) that the given payload could only be lifted by SRBs and therefore that's what was required. Nobody really cared how much the actual payload of the SLS was going to be, only that it could carry Orion to orbit because that's all anyone actually figure it would ever do anyway. "Commercial Cargo/Crew" was simply seen as a way to keep the complaints down while SLS/Orion meandered its way to operation and frankly I see Congress and NASA, (and more the former than the latter) as being caught flat-footed that it has done as well as it has. NASA seems to be adapting but Congress in the end will always have the purse stings so it remains to be seen how far they'll let it go if it should directly threaten SLS/Orion.

Having Congress being too busy in-fighting over SLS/Orion may be the best possible way to get where you want to go but I'm not sure how much such fighting would end up effecting Commercial Cargo/Crew.

Randy
 
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