&gt; That&#x27;s not a &quot;win&quot; in anyone&#x27;s book.<p>It was a great win for two reasons -- they could do it technically and they proved it, even automated the whole thing (just like Zimbabwe right ;-) ). And the other win was they realized this was an expensive endeavor and not a very good approach to taking people into space.<p>It took Americans many hundreds of billions dollars and lives to realize that?<p>&gt; We&#x27;re between systems, like the seven years between Apollo and the STS.<p>That makes sense, hadn&#x27;t thought of it that way. It has been only 4-5 years since last launch. Yeah I am looking forward to Orion&#x2F;SLS!<p>&gt; Its a happy coincidence Russia still has a legacy system for lifting people into the largely STS built and ferried ISS.<p>Is it? From a country that did pretty well with many firsts in space, builds reliable military hardware, killed less astronauts&#x2F;cosmonauts than our Shuttle. I mean, yeah, we all hate Russia and their commie regime, but I think it is a disservice a bit to downplay their engineers.