Good on ya, then. Even after all the times we and the Russians have flung mud pies at each other over the years, once they found a reliable solution to reach their goal, they stuck with it. Granted, both sides had their share of human losses in the process, but it seemed like Russia took a few extra liberties with their spaceflight hardware and worked their way backwards until they built the family sedan they were looking for. I, for one, always took it as a given when our astronauts were launched to the ISS successfully. A shame they went from Communism to a thugocracy.
One thing we always tipped our hats to about the Russians, if they had something that worked they didn’t mess with it. That meant they had production lines that were decades old. There are a lot of problems that get ferreted out over time. Their designs may have been old, but they had earned a reputation for reliability. It also meant we had to restructure ISS to fit the limitations of off-the-shelf hardware designed for something else. And it meant we had to change the orbital inclination drastically, resulting in much smaller lift capacity for the Shuttles launched from the Cape due to increased energy needed to get to the altered orbit.
Oh, well. As my mentor often said, “Change is our most important product.” Indeed.
The NappyOne