T
tomnackid
Guest
The Russian space program has been NASA's greatest acheivment to date! Making the Soyuze safe for three normal sized adults in pressure suits rivals the moon landing and was paid for out of NASA's pocket. <br /><br />What other nation can put 7 people into space in one shot and can bring back 40 tons of cargo? Nothing even on the drawing board for the next couple of decades can do all the things that the shuttle can do, so instead we are revising our expectations. Cargo return is no longer seen as a a priority. We will settle for 4 people into orbit at a time, maybe 6 if we are lucky. <br /><br />If the Air Force had been given their own booster to play with back in the 70's and NASA and its contractors had been allowed to develop the shuttle as they saw fit--rather than allowing congress to design it--we would not have spent so much money over that past two decades buying bandaids to fix problems that could have been fixed for one tenth the cost in the design phase.