Below is just a fun little clip one of the people I work with shared. As much fun as the gentleman narrating the clip is having at the expense of Soyuz (it’s all tongue in cheek), we really need to remember one thing: it’s the only way we can get people up to the ISS and back safely right now. An artifact with direct ancestry from the Space Race and Cold War is now helping ferry US astronauts to and from the ISS…
Everything else, the Dragon, the CST-100, is pretty much fiction–until they aren’t any longer. That’s not a knock on SpaceX or Boeing–it’s just the priority the United States government put on a way to transport astronauts to and from the ISS with a US-based system–which is to say none. I am a bit thankful that NASA is trying to get things moving on the commercial side, though.
How long have we known that particular problem would happen, by the way? For me, at least as early as 2004, when instructors noted during one of my classes the retirement of the shuttle with no replacement in sight. Which might have been plenty of time to have done something, but of course history shows just how well the US used that time.
At least there’s always humor to fall back on–enjoy the clip!
The Mad Spaceball 