Back...to the Future?

Logical and safe? Sure. Futuristic and inspiring? No. NASA chose Lockheed Martin to build Orion - a bell shaped "crew delivery vehicle" which will replace the Space Shuttle as the primary exploration vehicle for the next "decade" (read "quarter century" judging by the lifespan of the Shuttle). It may get the job done but who's not just a little bit disappointed that Orion looks just like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo? Weren't we promised more?

X33 wasn't all that exciting (it was a plane, it even looked like the Shuttle) but at least it didn't feel like backward motion. Huge booster rockets with astronauts crammed into a cone atop thousands of pound of liquid fuel seemed like a logical first step back in the 60s but everyone THOUGHT that our technological achievements would accelerate and that space exploration would evolve. That's what drove, in part, the Shuttle program – it was the next evolutionary step.

True, space exploration is a hugely complex undertaking and NASA has been plagued by problems – failures and loss...but isn’t space the final frontier? Aren’t the risks inherent? Shouldn’t how we get there evolve (or at least look cooler) over time? So with Orion, is NASA playing it safe or was the original thinking about how to ferry people and stuff beyond Earth’s atmosphere truly the best? Is this exploratory conservatism or back to the future for a reason?