Conventional wisdom holds that the competition for building the Orion CEV is over. On September 1, 2006 the government selected Lockheed Martin. The combined Boeing/Northrop Grumman team lost. The rest was supposed to be history.
Instead we are days away from the conclusion of a panel created by President Obama and chaired by LM's former President and CEO, Norm Augustine, the "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee".
Now LM is facing the prospect of at least two potential sort-of competitors, at least for a ship capable of reaching the International Space Station.
SpaceX "Dragon"
SpaceX has a contract to deliver cargo to the ISS via a NASA COTS-D contract. They're building the Dragon capsule (pictured above) to ride on a still-in-development rocket, the Falcon 9. As long as they're at it, though, SpaceX is building the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule to human rating standards. They're not exactly shy either about publicizing that the Dragon supports a "Crew Configuration". They describe it on their Dragon webpage.
Bigelow Aerospace "Orion Lite"
Bigelow Aerospace intends to offer the first "space hotel". Of course, they'll need a way to get guests to and from their hotels. They're targeting to build a stripped-down Orion Lite and presented to the Augustine panel that they can have one ready by the year 2013. (Articles on MSNBC, Space.com.) That's mind-blowing and, probably, nowhere near the truth. But for now it doesn't matter so much because that's a strictly commercial endeavor. They should try for it. Maybe they'll surprise.
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