In my opinion, Orion is pretty much worthless, although that's a strong opinion. Realistically it is at the very least a hugely flawed program.
Orion has no mission yet, it's really just a component of a larger system, but that larger system hasn't been designed or funded.
Worse, Orion has several design flaws that limit its usefulness. For example, it's designed with an old-fashioned tractor abort system, a huge solid fueled rocket that will be attached to the capsule during launches. However, in most realistic scenarios the crew for a mission that would use Orion would not actually be launched from Earth on Orion, rendering that feature nearly useless. Except that it's a feature that takes away literal tons of useful hardware from the spacecraft since it is a heavy (7.5 tonnes) component that steals payload mass from the rest of the vehicle.
That sort of issue is endemic to the entire Orion project, and even worse for SLS. It's a hugely expensive hypothetically useful system designed around hypothetical constraints for missions that haven't even been designed, let alone funded, yet. Realistically it'll probably end up not being useful for whatever mission architectures we end up with for future manned interplanetary missions, and more flexible designs or newer systems are, I suspect, far more likely to be useful and practical when that time comes.
Orion is particularly interesting since it's sort of the cornerstone of a potential manned Mars mission. But when you compare it against competing designs such as SpaceX's "MCT" architecture there is about 1-2 orders of magnitude greater cost, significantly greater complexity, and yet less capability. At this point there is a very high likelihood that no human crew will ever end up in an Orion spacecraft, and the more likely outcome is that the project will be abandoned prior to anything interesting happening with it.
Orion has no mission yet, it's really just a component of a larger system, but that larger system hasn't been designed or funded.
Worse, Orion has several design flaws that limit its usefulness. For example, it's designed with an old-fashioned tractor abort system, a huge solid fueled rocket that will be attached to the capsule during launches. However, in most realistic scenarios the crew for a mission that would use Orion would not actually be launched from Earth on Orion, rendering that feature nearly useless. Except that it's a feature that takes away literal tons of useful hardware from the spacecraft since it is a heavy (7.5 tonnes) component that steals payload mass from the rest of the vehicle.
That sort of issue is endemic to the entire Orion project, and even worse for SLS. It's a hugely expensive hypothetically useful system designed around hypothetical constraints for missions that haven't even been designed, let alone funded, yet. Realistically it'll probably end up not being useful for whatever mission architectures we end up with for future manned interplanetary missions, and more flexible designs or newer systems are, I suspect, far more likely to be useful and practical when that time comes.
Orion is particularly interesting since it's sort of the cornerstone of a potential manned Mars mission. But when you compare it against competing designs such as SpaceX's "MCT" architecture there is about 1-2 orders of magnitude greater cost, significantly greater complexity, and yet less capability. At this point there is a very high likelihood that no human crew will ever end up in an Orion spacecraft, and the more likely outcome is that the project will be abandoned prior to anything interesting happening with it.