"NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it."

That's like GM saying "You know what? We've been producing cars for a long time now. People should have a pretty good idea of how to figure it out. We are getting out of the car business, let people build their own cars from scratch now." (All GM sucks at building cars aside)

Only building a shuttle capable of carrying humans to LEO and docking with a space station MIGHT be a bit more complicated.

Perhaps say the difference between smoke signals and my iPhone.

What this REALLY means is that for a Very Long time, if you want to go to the ISS, you are going to be flying the Russian Rocket.

I can't wait to see what happens when they figure out that they are the only game in town...

I for one welcome my new comrade overlords. :)

I am from Soviet Canuckistan anyway, with my communist health care, so I won't notice much differance anyway... I might drink more Vodka, but I think I can deal with that.

It was the death of these seven, and the others, that make the danger to those that survived 'real'. If we don't revere their deaths as a loss, then we must not value the potential sacrifice of past and future astronauts.

They're sort of like soldiers, firemen, rescue workers, etc.

To paraphrase xkcd:

Movies: "Look, you can clearly see the O-ring giving way there!"

Reality: "We can continue blowing this up and interpolating pixels, but anything we saw would be just our imagination."