[Captain Rhino]

We can't fly the space shuttle until the external fuel tank foam shedding problem is fixed (again!). We don't have an off-the-shelf equivalent of the Soyuz design in production (or even ready for production). NASA will not finish designing and flight certifying the successor to the space shuttle, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), until about 2012.

I image you could try to put Apollo back into production but updating the design, converting all the drawings for use in CAD/CAM, perhaps developing an ISS docking adapter, and actually getting ready for series production of the space craft (and launch vehicles) ain't going to be cheap. It's not quite the equivalent of designing and building the CEV but darn close.

The Soyuz is a PROVEN space craft that the US has flown on in the past. We can purchase it with the confidence we'll be able to fulfill our ISS obligations. So we are stuck buying from the Russians until NASA can solve its shuttle problems. Yeah, it's somewhat embarrassing to have to purchase foreign but the Russians have been our (admittedly underfunded) partners in ISS for a while now and will be only too glad to crank out all the Soyuz's we need until we can get back on our feet - with a broad smile and for a price, that is.

The only other alternative NASA has is to shutdown our portions of the ISS for an unknown period and hope the cash-strapped Russians don't either abandon the ISS entirely or turn the thing into a branch of the Hilton hotel chain before we can get back up there.

[ARCADIA]

The only other alternative NASA has is to shutdown our portions of the ISS for an unknown period and hope the cash-strapped Russians don't either abandon the ISS entirely or turn the thing into a branch of the Hilton hotel chain before we can get back up there.

That sounds perfect to me. Let the worthless POS take a dive into the Pacific. If NSA wants to do something worthwhile, then I am all for it, but ISS is not anywhere near my definition of worthwhile. It's only purpose has been to provide a destination for the shuttle; no shuttle = no purpose.