Media coverage of NASA is lacking

This Time article bothers me. The writer can't decide if he's actually reporting news, or doing analysis, so it's just incoherent blather:

I'll summarize here: NASA getting better. Give money to Lockheed. NASA good.
Spread money around good. Lockheed inexperienced. Boeing not good.
Proven 1960s technology good. Except for computers. 1960s computers bad.


time article

A better explanation of the Orion vehicle is here:

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/Orion_spacecraft.html

What really should be happening, is this:

Come up with design options for a new crew vehicle to replace the space
shuttle. That involves launch and re-entry simulations on computers, using computational fluid dynamics, and some experimental launches and re-entries to test vehicle prototypes.

You can do all of this at most Universities. That's a better way to spread research and development money around, than to give it all to Lockheed and their subcontractors. Maybe this was already done in earlier phases, but the Time article didn't cover that.

Going back to a 1950's/1960's design where everything depends on an ablative heat shield, ignores the technical advances in materials made over the past 40 years.