[BoBToMatoE]

Why is it embarassing?

It's not like the Russians are novices in space.

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What is embarassing is that WE should be able to do this by our selves. Instead NASA is stuck on stupid because of top heavy thinking. NASA needs to get out of the administration mode and let the engineers loose!

[Sometimes A River]

I'm no big fan of NASA but if they can find something better and cheaper, let them do it.

Gov't doesn't exist to "create jobs," contrary to what many Republicans think.

[manwiththehands]

NASA needs to get out of the administration mode and let the engineers loose!

NASA didn't learn that after Challenger. I doubt it will happen now.

[repentant_pundit]

NASA needs to get out of the administration mode and let the engineers loose!

I'd take that one small step further and say that NASA needs to be taken out of the Administration altogether, and let the engineers go!

Private industry and privately funded research is the way to go.

If space travel is sufficiently worthwhile, inspiring, or entertaining, it will happen because donors and investors will voluntarily pay for it.

.

[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.

[Free Baptist]

We are just never going to consider (Are we??) that "little" things like this are part of a much larger picture of globalism, weakening all sense of national identity. There will be no United States or Russia before long, but a global system under which the United States will have no sovereign will, not sovereign initiative, no sovereign economy (Hello, NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, etc.), no sovereign exploration spirit, no sovereign defense posture, NO SOVEREIGN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, just NO sovereignty.

[TalonDJ]

NASA needs to get out of the administration mode and let the engineers loose!

What they need to do is CUT the engineers lose and by their services from the private sector. Engineers with poor management are a money pit (I am one) and NASA has show it does a poor job in that area.