I haven't been watching that closely, how far along is Orion in comparison?
I heard something about more drop testing, but don't know where that puts development.
NASA and LockMart are working towards an "internal" schedule of 2021 for Orion's first crewed flight, but they only have a 40% chance of making that. The official, external schedule is 2023, but that is still at only a 70% confidence level. Just last week, there was a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that explains these grim projections. Here's a good overview, with links to the report:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/a-new-independent-review-of-the-orion-spacecraft-is-pretty-damning/The Orion program has had to move so much testing downstream related to crew support and flight safety that I doubt the next NASA Administrator will let astronauts fly on Orion without a major schedule rework that will probably involve further delays. But that's my educated guess -- no one is saying that officially or publicly.
I also doubt the Orion program survives the next couple years. Orion has been in design or development for 12-odd years now, and won't carry astronauts until the second term of the next President at best. It's hard to see the new White House being content continuing to spend billions on that programmatic performance (or lack thereof). This is a programmatic, not political, choice that the next Administration faces, but I won't say more because I don't want to risk a Rule #4 warning.
I hesitate to compare Orion to crewed Dragon or Starliner because Orion is a cislunar vehicle while those are purely low-Earth orbit vehicles. (Red Dragon is a deep space vehicle but not crewed.) That said, Dragon and Starliner are scheduled to fly their first crews in 2018. One or both may slip to 2019.
Outside of short lunar missions, I think it's fair to say that Orion is a suboptimal solution to human space flight beyond low Earth orbit that has been further nerfed by a range of issues from bad requirements, poor technical choices, and politics.
SLS/Orion program having some issues, not technical side of it. Cost wise and NASA continue issue about not knowing what do with Human Space program.
That's not really accurate. There are substantial technical issues with Orion's heat shield, software, service module, etc.
As the program spends more now to tackle those near-term problems, they are shifting other issues downstream in the schedule to fit within their budget. This is creating a bow wave of problems that will swamp the program at some point in the future. This is the key warning in the GAO report.
But the appropriated budget for Orion has been well above NASA request for years now. It's not that Orion isn't getting the money the program asks for. They're actually getting more. It's that the program has way more problems that what they projected and budgeted for.
I already know about Exploration mission 1 and 2, though the details I've seen are rather vague, which isn't a good sign.
The test missions are well-defined. They're unmanned and manned loops around the Moon.
What has been undefined is what comes after. It's undefined because there is no human exploration budget to build anything else. SLS and Orion are too expensive for the available budget if we also want to build landers, habitats, deep space propulsion, etc. for human exploration missions to actual targets (Moon, Lagrange point telescopes, near-Earth asteroids, Mars, etc.).
changing decision makers every few years always has negative consequences for long term projects.
Well, the lesson is not to formulate or start programs that can't be completed within an 8-year or so timeframe. Apollo was 8 years and 2 months from start to Apollo 11.
We certainly can't spend 12 years on a large human space exploration capsule and still be an uncertain 5 to 7 years or more from putting astronauts in it with no other exploration hardware in sight.