To The Moon! (In a Minivan)

The Driver's Seat A partial Orion mock-up known as the ROC (reconfigurable operational cockpit) allows astronauts to evaluate the craft's control panel by going through simulations of critical stages of a mission. The ROC has already been used to resolve disputes about window design.

The essential technology America's space-shuttle astronauts depend on, which almost no one outside NASA knows about, is paper. Not just a file folder of vital checklists but actual piles of paper--stacks and stacks of it. Every minute of flight, every experiment, every space walk, is scripted. The routines are rehearsed in advance, manuals in laps, over and over. The loose-leaf sheets--called FDFs, or flight data files--are organized into functional sets, held together with three metal rings.

When the day comes to pull on the orange go-to-space suits, the paper goes too--250 pounds of it. Astronauts, strapped in for launch, have critical FDFs Velcroed to their legs for easy access. When you're hurling a 30-year-old spaceship into orbit, some things are not going to feel particularly space-age; hauling along your stacks of paper is definitely one of them.

The United States is long overdue for a new spaceship. The last time NASA's engineers sat down to design one--the space shuttle--it was 1974, and George W. Bush hadn't yet received his MBA from Harvard, or met Laura; the IBM Selectric was the dream office machine; a microwave oven was found in just 4% of U.S. kitchens.

Almost everything that matters in the world of technology and flight has changed since then: computing power, materials science, electronics, communications. Imagine if you hadn't designed something as prosaic as a car since 1974--before common use of fuel injectors, air bags, cup holders, not to mention engine-control computers and onboard navigation. A new model would likely be loaded with techno-wizardry.

Yet for NASA and Lockheed Martin, the principal contractor for designing America's next spacecraft, the goal is simplicity, not razzle-dazzle. The nation's new spaceship is called Orion. In shape, it looks like a big version of a 1960s-era Apollo craft--a cone-shaped crew capsule atop a cylindrical service module. "This is not a Ferrari, like the space shuttle," says Skip Hatfield, NASA's project manager for the capsule. "It's more like a minivan. It's more of a vehicle to go to the grocery store in."

That is, if the grocery store is on the moon. Orion is part of a larger program called Constellation, which is backed by a Jimmy Neutron--esque slogan: "To the moon, Mars, and beyond." NASA envisions Orion launching a new era of American space exploration, with people living on the moon as soon as the early 2020s. The Honda Odyssey minivan is not a bad metaphor for NASA's hopes for Orion: reliable, functional, thoughtfully designed, with more utility than glamour.

That's what the shuttle has never been, despite its ambitions. The shuttle was sold as a space truck that would handle large cargo loads and launch twice a month. Yet in the past decade, the shuttle has averaged just four flights a year. Its systems are so temperamental that taking it to orbit has turned out to be like driving to the Grand Canyon, spending a week examining the safety of your tires and engine, then turning back and driving home with just a glance over the canyon's edge. Although the shuttle's key elements have been flying for 25 years, its technology has never moved from cutting-edge to manageable. NASA has spent a generation worrying not about where we're going in space, but about handling the capricious vehicle we're flying.

Designing any new spacecraft requires relentless innovation. But sometimes the better part of innovation is not invention, but effectiveness. And therein lies the challenge for Orion, and for the engineers designing it. NASA and Lockheed Martin must find the discipline to produce a straightforward spaceship, with a clear mission and mature technology. And they must do it by 2015, with a total budget of only $8 billion--the equivalent of six weeks' expenses in Iraq.

But Orion will hardly be primitive. Those stacks of paper the astronauts depend on, for example: They're being banished. The beloved FDFs and all the procedures they outline are being built into Orion's onboard computers. But the really remarkable things are the computers themselves. The shuttle's computers had to be custom-designed. Orion's computers use existing Honeywell technology. They are fifth-generation aerospace avionics boxes, with millions of hours of real-world experience, the same computers pilots use to fly Boeing 777s, hardened against vibration and radiation for the rigors of space flight.

Says Larry Price, a Lockheed engineer who is second-in-command of creating Orion: "We spent nothing to develop them." He's smiling. How sweet it is in the year 2007 to be designing a new rocket ship, look around, and buy the computers to fly to the moon off-the-shelf.