In article om,
says...

On 14-06-06 03:41, Brian Gaff wrote:
Its just a crew module,

It is just a capsule. Can't sustain people for long periods. So it's
role is basically to secure crews during take off and re-entry in tight
seats and tight fit. It's bigger than Apollo not because they want to
make it comfortable, but because they want to fit more people in it.

Personally, I think an expedition ship would be better off with 2 soyuz
size re-entry capsules than one Orion.

I also do not see any projects that will make use of Orion, hence my
thinking it is Pork.

Designing some capsule without a specific use in mind is a nice make
work project that will likely yield something that isn't really good for
anything.

Actually, Orion's life support sytems are supposed to be rated for "up
to 21 days maximum active crew time plus 6 months quiescent". Fromn
what I understand, the 21 day requirement was driven by the duration of
a hypothetical lunar mission. 21 days is fairly "long" when compared to
the requirements for Commercial Crew, which are on the order of "several
days", even when you include continencies.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer