My emotions on this are complex. On the one hand, it's nice to see legit space exploration being reset after the 40-year space shuttle pause. On the other hand, NASA is now and has always been a beard for the NRO so I gotta wonder what they're really after. There is no aspect of the Orion that lends itself to space reconnaissance as far as I can tell.

But at the same time, space exploration is proxy warfare. The ascendancy of the US space program is directly correlated with the Cold War; it was all about achievement and daring-do in the Bay of Pigs era and all about economic attrition during Charlie Wilson's War. Now the Chinese have a space station, Russia is threatening to pull out of the ISS and the ESA is off doing its own thing. Europe is no longer our proxy pawn and with actual "warfare" being carried out via UCAV it kinda makes sense to go "hey, let's go to Mars 'cuz none of you other pikers have the technical knowhow USA USA USA USA!"

There's an NRO/DIA angle in there somewhere, though. I'm just not sure where.

Doesn't really matter much. A capsule is a capsule. To get it anywhere interesting you need scads of impulse. A Delta IV Heavy is basically a LEO space-tug; you wanna play games with "people" and "moon" and "mars" you need that big bitch on the right. That sucka ain't much more than a glimmer in NASA's eye right now.