NASA is preparing to launch its new Orion capsule on Thursday, December 4. It will be the first test launch of the spacecraft, which is being billed as kind of a big deal because it represents the agency's first major step toward regaining an inhouse manned spaceflight capability -- something it has not had since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

The cause of Tuesday's Antares 130 launch failure is not known. The builder and owner of the rocket, Orbital ATK, will lead an investigation of the accident, and it will be assisted by NASA and the FAA. All that is known for sure at this point was tweeted by Orbital ATK: "There has been a vehicle anomaly. The vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure." Uh, yeah. That much seems painfully self-evident.

If you want a good example of what's wrong with the US space program, take a good look at the Space Launch System rocket NASA is developing. In 2011, NASA estimated the cost of developing this human-rated, heavy-lift vehicle, along with the Orion crew capsule and launch facility upgrades, at $18 billion through 2017. The latest estimate by NASA pegs the development cost for SLS/Orion at between $19 billion and $22 billion through 2021. Almost everyone in the space industry understands that this is an extremely disingenuous low-ball estimate.

The two Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts awarded to Boeing and SpaceX by NASA on September 16 should come as no big surprise to anyone familiar with both the agency's conservative culture and its relatively small annual budget of just under $18 billion. Boeing received $4.2 billion to continue with development of its human-rated system based on the Atlas V rocket and CST-100 capsule, while SpaceX got $2.6 billion to continue work on its Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket and Dragon V2 combo.