NASA: Orion to carry four ISS crew not six

So how will US service its crew transportation obligations with only 4 seats? "our Russian partners are always going to fly Soyuz or something derivative to that"

Yep. Just put your share on the ol' Russian credit card. When the American partners croak, the Russian partners will be there.

It'll be awfully embarrassing to NASA if Mr. Musk can shoot all 7 people to ISS in a Dragon.

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again, again, again and again NASA (finally) adopts an idea I've suggested months/years ago!

I've already said from 2005 (posting on several Space forums and blogs) that a six seats CEV/Orion was/is/will be completely USELESS and I've explained WHY in this (15 months old) article:

http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/023deadweight.html

while suggesting some ways to design a lighter Orion in this article:

http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/031easyways.html

unfortunately, also the lighter Orion will never fly due to an underpowered/bad designed Ares-1, as explained in this article:

http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/012arescantfly.html

in other words, they have LOST up to SIX YEARS to adopt (just now) the SAME ideas I've suggested them two, three, five years ago!!!

also, they're going to LOSE up to EIGHT more years (and up to $30 billion) to develop a rocket that will NEVER fly, so, in 2017, they'll be forced to RESTART the ESAS plan from ZERO!

however, today, the most urgent problem is to STOP the Hubble SM4 forever until it's TOO LATE:

http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/044sm4risks.html

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So the jumbo 5 meter diameter Orion capsule is too heavy for a 6 man ISS mission. Yet the 4 man moon mission is still burdened by this 21,000 pound behemoth capsule. All the mass margins of the moon mission are hurt by the oversized and overweight Orion capsule. All for nothing.

NASA should have from the very beginning selected a 4 to 4.5 meter diameter capsule for Orion. That would have had plenty of room for 4 man mission plus enough contingency space for a 6 man lifeboat for the ISS. Just as the 1980's era British study for a multi-role capsule had concluded that a 4 meter capsule would suffice.

I think it's very notable that the Dragon spacecraft has a very similar design to the old British study. And I think the original NASA 5.5 meter capsule (since shrunk to 5 meters) was always nothing more than an attempt to preclude any other rocket than an SRB derived one as a launch vehicle, by fixing the mass of the Orion too high. Well NASA have shot themselves in the foot with that gambit.

Brad, you are right on the mark. It is transparent that Mike Griffin ordered all those in the Orion design/decision group to max out the mass so NEVER would an EELV be able to lauch it. Now they have gone a few hundred LBS too far.

First they could haul that back out and save the two seats. All those who have met astronauts know how furious they must be that their opportunities to fly are deminished by two seats per flight from 2015 to 2020! Because of the incompetence and venality of others.

Maybe they should take out 3 more seats and reserve the last for Mike Griffin ... no-one in their right mind wants to fly that POGO-STICK anyway!

Next to simply dropping the whole mess, the easiest solution is to kill Ares-1 and launch everything on Ares-5. Voila, no more weight problem.

Sadly, the worst possible thing is exactly what NASA will do: continue stumbling along with both launchers, wasting time, money and political will, until the entire program either grinds to a stagnant-budget halt or suffers a spectacular plug-pulling failure.