Comment Re:Not allowed to play with Russia (Score 1) 71
Somebody remind me - why did we stop funding shuttle missions before getting a replacement technology in place?
Because NASA's primary contractors couldn't design a simple light-weight Soyuz-like capsule to go on Atlas V for less than a couple of billion dollars and 4 years development.
And they couldn't design Version 2 of the Shuttle without turning it into a ridiculous beyond-the-bleeding-edge SSTO wank-fantasy (NASP/VentureStar/DeltaClipper...) Every time NASA got permission/funding to develop a Shuttle replacement, they screwed it up. Over the last 30 years, they lost so much engineering experience, they couldn't even design a capsule or mini-spaceplane to service the ISS.
Cancelling the shuttle outright was meant to force them to "focus" on a practical solution.
Instead, NASA came up with Constellation...