 Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to Tomorrow. This week I wanted to talk about a NASA program that might get reshuffled, rescheduled, or outright cancelled in the wake of the presidential election. But as long as we stay positive, some of these changes could be very good for the human spaceflight program and NASA in general. This is your space pod for November 16th, 2016. So first off, the most important thing I wanted to talk about is the Orion capsule, and a very quiet request for information that NASA put out which is seeking additional options to manufacture the Orion for less money or to replace it altogether. This request for information was put out in September of this year and the roots of NASA's disillusionment with current Orion contractor Lockheed Martin goes much further back. So in order to understand this, we need to look at a little bit of history. The Orion program officially began in 2006 under George W. Bush's constellation program 10 years ago. And between the time the program started and the time that Obama took office, a lot of cost overruns and schedule delays and a really nasty habit of deferring work until later got started. The government accountability office advised the Obama administration in 2009 that the Orion program didn't have a sound business case and it ran the risk of spiraling out of control similar to the James Webb telescope, which originally was supposed to cost $500 million and is going to cost over $8 billion before it's finally launched. Part of the problem with Orion is its cost plus contract. A cost plus contract is where a contractor is paid all of the expenses to a set limit for whatever it is that they're being contracted for. And the amount that that limit is is actually pretty flexible. Plus, they are paid an additional amount of money to allow for profit. And it's that plus part that really bothers me. So even though the Obama administration was advised to cancel Orion and the entire constellation program, congressional backlash kept the Orion program alive and eventually resurrected the Aries 5 rocket to become the space launch system rocket. Work continued on Orion and eventually it had its first uncrewed test flight in 2014 on a Delta IV rocket. But so far, NASA has spent about $10 billion on Orion with an estimated $6 billion more in payments before the first crewed flight of Orion, which is estimated to take place somewhere in the 2021 to 2023 timeframe, five to seven years away from right now. So the government accountability office took another look at the Orion program recently and released their report in July of this year, and it was not good. I'll have a link to that report in the description below so that you can read it for yourself. Basically, the government accountability office found that NASA has been relying too heavily on Lockheed Martin's estimates for the cost and schedule without having any reliable independent information. The government accountability office also found that Lockheed Martin has providing vague information, unreliable information, and is deferring so much work on the capsule until later that the whole program is running the risk of ballooning once again in order to make the Orion capsule a safe and reliable vehicle for human passengers in deep space. Now these cost and schedule estimates come from reports called JCLs, which stands for Joint Cost and Confidence Level Analysis, and they use very well defined best practices for coming up with reliable information for these estimates. The government accountability office found that Lockheed's cost estimates for Orion only met seven out of 20 best practices, and as for their schedule estimates, it only met one out of eight best practices. That is not good. So with this recent report from the government accountability office and the looming administration change, NASA put out this request for information in September, which I'll put a link to that below so that you can read the whole thing for yourself. It's actually pretty short. And this whole thing is to seek information, additional information from the space industry to manufacture more Orion capsules after exploration mission two. Right now the current contract, the current obligation to Lockheed Martin is to have Orion capsules for exploration mission one and exploration mission two. Since NASA owns the Orion spacecraft and all of its proprietary information, they essentially are looking at giving the blueprints to someone else to manufacture the Orion for less money than what Lockheed Martin can do it for. Notably, NASA is seeking fixed price contracting for this possible alternative and is even willing to look at other vehicles other than Orion. So the whole goal of this is for NASA to be able to move forward on their journey to Mars either with Orion or something else that is less money than the current Lockheed contract and is also safe and reliable. Now, I need to be very clear about something. This is a very important distinction. This is not a contract proposal. NASA is just seeking information. And if the space industry doesn't provide NASA with a better alternative, they might be stuck with Lockheed Martin. And if that's the case, it's very interesting. Lockheed Martin has responded to this request for information saying that after exploration mission two they could manufacture Orion capsules for half the price. Which, in my opinion, is just another example of Lockheed Martin not sharing information. If they can suddenly build the Orion capsule for half the price, how come they aren't doing so already? So I'm going to end this video here, but there is at least one thing that I'm sure of in this whole climate of uncertainty right now. I believe that NASA is being very responsible and prudent seeking out these alternatives and having as many multiple options available to them as they can for this whole transition into a new administration. But what do you think? What do you think NASA should do? Do you think that they should try to renegotiate the contract with Lockheed Martin to lower the price of Orion and actually get accurate information? Or do you think that they should complete their current obligation and then hand over the manufacture of Orion to someone else? Or do you think they should cancel Orion entirely and look at someone else's vehicles like from Boeing or SpaceX? Let me know in the comments section below or on any of our social media pages. I really want to know what you think about this. Tomorrow is a crowdfunded show through Patreon and I would like to thank all of our patrons whose continued contributions allow us to keep making these videos. Every little bit helps to create content that you want to see and I am very grateful for your contributions. If you would like to support the show please visit patreon.com slash space pod for more information and to sign up at whatever level that you feel is appropriate. Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark. Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody. Stay positive and I will see you in the future.