CAN THE LEGACY AEROSPACE COMPANIES DO ANYTHING RIGHT ANYMORE? Component failure in NASA’s deep-space crew capsule could take months to fix. “Replacing the PDU isn’t easy. The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.”

The alternative approach is to cut metal to get to the part. This is terrible design. On the “bright” side, the whole program is so screwed up that this delay may not matter: “If engineers choose to remove Orion from its service module, the capsule’s first flight on the SLS may be delayed past its current date of November 2021. But the SLS has experienced its own set of delays: it was supposed to fly for the first time in 2017 but hasn’t done so yet. It’s not clear if the SLS itself will make the November 2021 flight date either; a key test of the rocket coming up at the end of the year has been pushed back, with no new target date set. So it’s possible that Lockheed Martin and NASA can fix Orion before the SLS is ready to fly.”