It's my understanding that the new vehicle will project a failure rate of 1 in 10,000 flights.  I'm skeptical that this number can be achieved, given how complicated and dangerous the task is.  However, even if it's 1 in 100 flights, it's still an improvement.

I find myself disappointed that the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle is basically just a scaled up Apollo vehicle. I've no doubt it will work fine, and will include tech many tech advances,  I was really hoping to see a next generation shuttle using new and more durable sophisticated heat shield technology and advanced systems for navigation, propulsion, and flight. I'd love to have seen a single stage to orbit system - such as the proposed linear aerospike engined Venture Star.  Instead, experiences with the shuttle appear to have only frightened NASA from building another such complex machine. They've been frightened back 30 years instead of forward. Risk management has taken over so much that they'll give up the large capacity and capability of a shuttle sized and class machine.  I consider it a bad sign for NASA.  My main hope for the future of space is that carbon nano-tube fabrics will quickly develop to the point they can be used for the proposed Space Elevator.

I still wonder if they gave up on the Venturestar prematurely.  man that would have been great if we could have built a fleet of em'

The worst part of it was that initially when they cancelled the venturestar program they didnt nominate an interim shuttle replacement, and NASA stated that the current shuttle fleet would be just fine for the forseeable future.  Then maybe 2 or 3 years later the columbia disentigrates (shuttles expected 98-99% survivability and that was the second disaster in 114 or so launches) and suddenly the space shuttle is an obsolete death trap, NASA has had to start from scratch designing a replacement, and our scientific and military growth in space has been reduced ever since.