Testing Orion MPCV

Last month, NASA conducted a flight test of its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into deep space. The flight dropped an Orion from an aircraft to test how it would survive a landing on only two parachutes instead of the standard three. Orion hit the ground at the top of the predicted speed range and made it through intact.

NASA is aiming for a first, unmanned spaceflight of Orion in 2014, but the first manned deep space mission may not be until 2021.

By then, if all goes extremely well, there could be one or more private companies with a similar deep space manned capability-- that seems to be the goal of Obama administration policy. So why should NASA build Orion and the huge rocket meant to launch it? Are those efforts largely job programs for aerospace workers who might otherwise swell the already unhealthy number of the unemployed? Will Orion ever fly beyond low Earth orbit? We'll know in a few years.