[Prime Choice]

Why do you want to be selective to your comparisons to make the U.S. safety record better? How about these statistics? Not a single American on the list.

Once again, you're comparing apples and oranges.

If you're so impressed with the Russian space program, perhaps you can regale us with tales of their manned lunar landings, Phobos missions to Mars and the stellar flight record of the Buran.

As for the number of flights, NASA has a standing policy of rotating crews and retiring them to train other astronauts. That means our pool of qualified talent is larger than that of Russia. Hence our lack of repeat missions by our personnel is by no means some kind of badge of shame.

Moreover, the Mir project (by which your much-vaunted human-in-space records were accomplished) was little more than an endurance record issue. Not exactly what I call an astounding space-faring achievement.

[FreedomCalls]

The only pictures of the surface of Venus are from the 4 successful Russian landers. The U.S. has not yet managed to produce any pictures of Venus from a lander.

[FreedomCalls]

perhaps you can regale us with tales of ... the stellar flight record of the Buran.

The Buran never carried any astronauts. It was a program that was not persued. I can list many more such U.S. programs that were not persued (such as Dynasoar, X-24B, X-30, X-38, etc). Are they failures too?