Europe's ATV to merge with America's Orion MPCV ?

  It appears that NASA management is seriously considering merging the still birthing Orion/Multi Puropse Crew Vehicle program (MPCV) with the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). This marriage of convienence would take advantage of the already built ATV which has flown two vehicles to the International Space Station and would save NASA money in buying an already in production space worthy craft rather than spending money on developing and testing a domestic service module that would cost increaingly hard to come by dollars to develop, build, test, and fly.

  Whether Lockheed Martin approves of giving up development work in lieu of handing over their crew module to be shotgun wedded to a European service module remains to be seen. Bill Gersteinmaier of NASA is optomistic that melding the ATV to Orion's command module is the way to go, and would soldify already firm ties beween US and European space poliy goals and paralell hardware developments. the ATV was built with an eventual human rating in mind to carry a crew to and from orbit , but the ongoing scourge of budgetary limitations in Europe as well as the US dictate that if Europe wants a crewed version of the ATV, merging with the American Orion/MPCV might be the best way forward for both parties.

  The ATV changing into and Orion/MPCV service module would happen after 2015 though hardware modifications and management could change much sooner. The first unmanned flight of a crew capable but still test version of Orion will happen when it is launched to orbit atop a Delta IV-H booster at the end of 2013 for a EFT -1 (Exploration Flight Test) involving multiple orbits of the earth and reentry and splashdown in the Pacific as would happen at the end of a Orion/MPCV crewed mission anyway. A fully crew capable merged spacecraf able to launch atop the SLS booster for rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station or other destination beyond low Earth orbit is still slated for late 2015, or possibly later with this newly announced prospedtive program merger.

  Will the merging of the Orion and ATV be a marriage made in heaven, or a hybrid bastard with less capability than a purely American spacecraft, accompanied by the usual delays, cost overruns and loss of capability such hardware and program mergers have produce in the past ? No one knows. But the Orion and ATV programs are poised for a hardware and program merger sooner than later it appears.