Given the present budget situation, "it is what it is," said Kennedy Space Center's director Robert Cabana, a former astronaut. And the presidential election ahead could bring further delays and uncertainties.
But don't confuse Orion with NASA's old-time Apollo capsules. The 11-foot (3.3-meter)-tall Orion is designed to hold four astronauts, one more than Apollo. For relatively short outings of three weeks or so, Orion could accommodate six.
"People often ask us, `Hey, this thing looks like a capsule, it looks like Apollo,' and people will confuse that with `it's not new,' " said Scott Wilson, NASA's Orion production operations manager. While physics drives the capsule's outer bell shape, "everything else in the capsule is state-of-the-art," he said.
"Everything, from the thrusters, from the environmental control systems, to the structure itself" is benefiting from all the advances in technology, Wilson said.
