Casey Handmer Makes a Detailed Case Why the NASA Orion Space Capsule Has 1 in 10 Chance of Crew Loss

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Casey Handmer is an Australian-born physicist, engineer, entrepreneur, and pilot renowned for his pioneering work at the intersection of astrophysics and sustainable energy. Holding a PhD in general relativity from Caltech, where he also taught courses in waves, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and computational methods, Handmer honed his expertise through research on frontier technologies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and contributions to the Hyperloop project, including competing in the 2015 Caltech Space Challenge. As the founder and CEO of Terraform Industries, he leads efforts to revolutionize carbon-neutral fuel production by synthesizing hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 and solar energy at gigascale, aiming to make clean natural gas cheaper than fossil fuels to combat climate change.

NASA Orion is Unsafe

Casey Handmer arrives at his 1 in 10 chance estimate for catastrophic failure or crew loss on Artemis II not through a formal probabilistic model or detailed calculation, but as a qualitative synthesis of Orion’s systemic flaws, drawing on historical NASA precedents and the mission’s unique risks.

Casey aggregates concerns like the heat shield’s persistent char loss, cracking, and spalling. These were seen in 2014 ground tests and the 2022 Artemis I flight. There has been no root-cause fix before the planned crewed flight. There is untested deep-space life support. Hatch pressure issues echoing Apollo 1. The abort system is unproven for crewed scenarios. NASA has an official “1 in 270” lifetime odds of crew death (a probabilistic risk assessment target). This is unrealistically optimistic given falsified consensus in reviews and dissenting voices like former astronaut Charles Camarda.

Charles Camarda is a veteran astronaut. He flew STS-114 which was the first post-Columbia Shuttle flight and was former Johnson Space Center flight director with 45 years at NASA. Camarda has been vocal since December 2024 about the heat shield’s unresolved char loss and ablation issues from Artemis I. As a member of the Independent Review Team (IRT), he dissented from the unanimous approval to fly Artemis II with the flawed shield and a modified re-entry trajectory, warning it doesn’t address root causes like offgassing and could expose the crew to plasma intrusion during re-entry.

Garrett Reisman is a former NASA astronaut. He was on STS-123 and Expedition 16/17 on the ISS. He left in 2011 for SpaceX. Reisman highlighted Orion and Artemis risks in a September 15, 2025, Space Review op-ed. He warned of a deteriorating NASA safety culture under political pressures. NASA is stifling dissent and increasing odds of tragedy on riskier lunar missions like Artemis II.

Orion still
-has not flown people
-it has a fundamentally unsafe heat shield
-it has not tested life support yet
-is too heavy to go to the Moon, or pretty much anywhere

NASA Position on Heat Shield

NASA’s extensive post-Artemis I investigation (completed 2024–2025). Root cause identified (Dec 2024–early 2025) is unexpected char liberation on Artemis I (2022) was due to trapped pyrolysis gases building pressure in low-permeability areas of the Avcoat ablative material during the “skip” reentry phase (lower-than-peak heating in the second atmospheric pass). This caused horizontal cracking and chunk release rather than uniform ablation.

NASA’s conclusion is that even with the observed char loss, internal temperatures remained well within limits. Had crew been aboard Artemis I, they would have been safe. No breach of the virgin (un-charred) Avcoat layer occurred.

Mitigation for Artemis II (crewed, NET April 2026) is to fly the existing heat shield “as-is” but with a modified reentry trajectory that shortens time in the problematic temperature/pressure regime (no full skip or reduced dwell). This eliminates the conditions that caused cracking on Artemis I.
Future fixes: Artemis III+ heat shields use improved manufacturing for better uniformity/permeability. No redesign needed.

Since 2022, NASA and Lockheed have changed the heat shield design again. Before understanding the root cause of spalling in 2022, which turned out to have been caused by offgassing in the resin binder exceeding the tensile strength of the material, NASA had also been concerned by potential delamination of the blocks from their stainless steel backing, and had altered the AVCOAT formula yet again to make it easier to ultrasonically inspect any one of these 186 blocks for damage prior to launch.

Unfortunately, this formula change will exacerbate the thermal offgassing and spalling issue. By how much, it is impossible to say without another flight test, which will cost another $5.2b plus four years of $3b/year development cost. So $17b?

NASA and Lockheed are going to spend four times the total development cost of Crew Dragon and six times the total cost of the HLS contract on their third attempt to successfully build a capsule heatshield using a technology humans have had for more than sixty years.

NASA plans to run the third Orion heatshield test as part of Artemis II, with four astronauts on board. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hanson, who have decided to name their spacecraft “Integrity,” will be human guinea pigs for this two decade exercise in profligate waste and shockingly poor program management.

Safety Concerns

The Orion’s AVCOAT heat shield has shown cracking, char loss, chipping, and deep pits in tests. Multiple design changes have increased risks like offgassing and spalling, with Artemis II relying on unproven trajectory adjustments to manage heat loads.

The 7-ton launch abort system remains largely untested for crewed flights, with past vibration problems and risks from solid rocket debris. Critical crew safety elements like suits, fire suppression, and waste management were deferred.

Bolt erosion during Artemis I allowed plasma to enter gaps, potentially compromising the heat shield. Temporary shims are used for Artemis II, but a full redesign is pending.

Life Support (ECLSS) is untested in deep space with crew until Artemis II. A 2023 CO2 removal valve fault is inaccessible and could lead to suffocation.

The side hatch lacks a pressure equalization valve (a known issue since 2017, reminiscent of Apollo 1), based on an unvalidated scaled-up Gemini design.

Early parachute test failures (resolved by 2013). 24 power interruptions on Artemis I, with redundant units failing and radiation vulnerabilities requiring software workarounds.

Shock loads could disconnect batteries. flight software development was deferred, causing overruns and delays in avionics fixes.

Design Flaws

Excessive Weight and Low Delta-V: At over 33 tons, Orion exceeds mass budgets, limiting delta-V to 1,450 m/s. This is below the 1,640 m/s needed for lunar orbit insertion/exit without a lander.

Underpowered Service Module: Uses obsolete 1958-era AJ10 engines (26 kN thrust) prone to valve failures. Refurbished Shuttle engines add massive costs.

Deferred Capabilities: Docking system added late at $2.5B. no initial support for lunar lander integration or full ECLSS.

Cost Issues

Over $30B in development since 2006, with $5.2B per launch and $1B marginal costs. This far exceeds alternatives like Crew Dragon ($800M total).

$270M for engine refurbishments, bonuses paid despite delays, and pencil whipping to approve incomplete work.

Performance Issues

20 years in development with only one uncrewed test (Artemis I, 2022). Artemis II pushed to 2026, no operational crewed flights yet.

Cannot independently reach and return from lunar orbit; relies on unnecessary Lunar Gateway, inferior to cheaper options like Crew Dragon or Starship.

Accusations of fraudulent progress claims and a culture that prioritizes bureaucracy over safety and innovation.

4 thoughts on “Casey Handmer Makes a Detailed Case Why the NASA Orion Space Capsule Has 1 in 10 Chance of Crew Loss”

  2. Interesting story Brian. Really would be the end of NASA if ORION pulled another space shuttle Columbia. A true end to the age in which I was raised, where proto-techbros worshiped the bureaucracies of the national labs as THE AUTHORITY on high science/tech.

    Is readership and/or participation down or what? Should be a dozen armchair scientists calling for the defunding of NASA on this thread.

    • Defunding NASA in favor of what? SpaceXplode? Falcon is a good LEO rocketship but it’s no good for Moon missions. Starship has an even higher risk profile than Orion at this point, and probably for a long time. And refueling in space has never been tried but is necessary for lunar missions. It’s payload capacity so far is a banana.

      What has happened to America? We have to take lessons from China, who used to copy America. I’m old enough to remember seeing the Apollo program land men on the Moon, successful every time except the fatal Apollo 1 test (which tragedy they learned from and never had again) and the ill-fated Apollo 13, which thankfully no one died from. Would NASA have the right kind of creative problem solving team to get astronauts home today in similar circumstances? Doubtful. NASA’s failures are emblematic of so much of America’s failures now, which is absurdly reliant on one over-worked over-committed 54-year old multi-billionaire.

      • The SLS is a supposedly finished product, ready for delivery. Same for Orion. Developed by the “Throw money at it and try to get everything right the first time” approach. We’re seeing with Orion that that’s not so great.

        Starship is still in development, and a “push it to the limits and see what breaks, then fix it” style of development, too.

        So comparing them at this point is not really legitimate. Maybe when SpaceX has spent as much on Starship development as has been spent to date on the SLS?

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