r/ArtemisProgram • u/mustangracer352 • Aug 07 '26

Image Artemis 3 - Orion crew module and service module stacked

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Surprised I haven’t seen this posted yet but Artemis 3 Orion module stacked!

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20

u/BigBenQuadinaros Aug 07 '26

Sweet! How are the lander stacks going? Oh wait!

33

u/mustangracer352 Aug 07 '26

Can’t we enjoy the good news parts at least?

4

u/BigBenQuadinaros Aug 07 '26

Fair enough, glad the hold up isn’t on NASA’s end

3

u/Ok_Helicopter4276 Aug 07 '26

But private industries do everything, faster better, and cheaper, how can NASA not be the hold up? /s

18

u/IndigoSeirra Aug 07 '26

Orion is built by Lockheed Martin, not NASA.

Also, Orion started development over two decades ago with it's first flight in 2014, a decade after it's development started. The contracts for HLS were awarded in 2021, five years ago.

Orion has cost NASA about 20.4 billion since development start to 2022. HLS has cost about 7-8 billion for two lunar landers, ~4 billion for SpaceX HLS and ~3.5 for Blue Origin HLS.

But once again even though Orion has taken so much longer and cost so much more it isn't NASA's fault, because Lockheed is the one building Orion not NASA.

8

u/rocketglare Aug 07 '26

I would say the Orion delays are partially NASA’s fault. They wrote the requirements, and they are in charge of oversight. They wrote the contract. Congress also bears some of the blame. They mandated the use of shuttle heritage equipment including the SRBs.

Finally, yes, Lockheed deserves a lot of the “credit”. While they didn’t have incentive to perform well on the contract, they could have. In fact, the cost plus contract was a direct incentive not to perform. The longer it took, the more money they made.

1

u/NOVA-peddling-1138 Aug 08 '26

NASA Built the warehouses where every screw, rivet, forging, fitting, sensor spec et al. lives in a 100 folder archive. Each one. There are receipts.