Orion landing to only be splashdown, no ground landings

I didn't realize that they had been planning to land on the ground with airbags, but had to remove them to meet their weight requirements.

The water landing scenario - previously only required during a launch abort - is one of several items that are being baselined into the next design cycle as a weight savings measure. The deletion of landing airbags - and reduction of Orion structure - will aid the requirement Lockheed Martin engineers have been given to reduce the mass of Orion, allowable because of the 'softer' water landings.

Previously, the Orion was designed to land on large airbags at a landing range, although earlier hints that was no longer going to be the case came via documentation that showed a water landing - off the coast of Australia - for the Orion 3 unmanned test flight in September 2012. The first manned flight, Orion 4, was due to land at Edwards Air Force Base.