Anon1,
Your comments tend to be the only ones that have technical merit and are not jabs at the US evil empire.
Woodpeckr,
I find your comments particularly curious. Are you a US citizen? Who are you to criticize our choice of using our tax dollars in a way that is consistent with our national priorities? If you guys want to launch a hockey puck into space, get busy. Otherwise don't come with an off the cuff remark about the US relying on Russian space technology. If the Russians had nothing, we had not only the means but men with the balls to jump on our exisiting space vehicles to accomplish a rescue. In the spirit of international cooperation, afterfall that is what is so much tauted by the rest of the world as the thing the US does not honor, we fully relied on our partners in the space station effort..that being the Soviets and deferred to their 1970's technology for the purpose of retrieving the astronauts. BTW--that would be the same purchased yet modified technology that the Chinese used to launch their astronaut into space. Hardly a technical triump based on Chinese capability alone. I for one am happy that the Russians were able to pull some weight. If it hadn't been for us keeping them afloat, they wouldn't have had the financial means to launch that rescue mission. And as for a space station, nobody other than the US has the payload capability in terms of rockets or a vehicle like the shuttle to even think about such a project. So that would be a nice swipe, but ludicrous.
EBS