Reply #9: bushmeister0

[Diclotican]

bushmeister0

The Russians have some robust and sturdier spacecrafts that for sure.. But I really don't believe that the current russian spacecraft have the same ability as the US counterpart have... After Buran was "canceled" in 1991-92 the russians have had no counterpart to the US Shuttle...

But it is pretty correct to say that the russians have the ability to work out many things, that would have destroyed the ISS many times over... Just the fire who hit MIR on the older days would have wrecked ISS I guess... But then MIR was overdue by almost a decade.. MIR was build to last 6, maybe 7 year, and was twice the age when she finally was "going down".. 17 year, that is a old bird when i came to space... Specially when the country who put it up there vanished into thin air, and the other country Russia was broke, and couldn't even get the men stranded there down for a year and a half... Must have been troublesome to be there, and you know the country you once waw a proud member of, was going to hell, and the new Russia was more or less broke them too....

But anyway the russian space program survived and are still there - even it be on a mutch slower pace than the old soviet program.. And as some have told it, the russian program have been living on fumes for good how know, and need some new spacecraft themself.. It is not just the Space Shuttle who are beginning to be old - the russian counterparts have 40 year on their behind... Even that the systems are durable and in working order.. But the funds nessesary to make new space veicles have not coming easy...

And in some year, even NASA have problems as the Space Shuttle are on their way out... A marble when new, but now beginning to be old. And it is maybe more easy to build new ones than to modernize and to fix the old ones... And I would be sure that both Boeing and Locheed Martin would be more than happy to build new ones, if orders was coming.. Even modernize the whole thing to a new one.

Diclotican