Next time, I.S.S. 2 or what ever its name will be should be build like
Mir.

Jim Kingdon wrote in message ...
Neither the ESA nor Japan is planning
a particularly robust flight rate.

Correct.

Russia would perhaps like to continue their flight rate
but there is the issue of money.

Well... The same thing probably be can said about N.A.S.A. (U.S.A.),
after the Space Shuttles were retired, will N.A.S.A. got the enough
money?

So I could see them *saying* they don't need the US,
but I'm not sure they would really mean it.

The Russian sure can said that they don't need the U.S.A. government,
considering there's no way that the U.S.A. government will pay for the
Russian space programs. Though obviously that the Russian no longer
have control of their own space program, considering that they can be
ordered to bring down Mir and then claimed that it was done with their
own will.

E.S.A. (Europe) and N.A.S.D.A (Japan) on the other hand are quite
dependant on N.A.S.A. for manned spaceflight.

Betcha that any future space station probably will done by the
'private' industry without any participation from any current
government in the world.

Of course the other approach is to use something larger than the usual
resupply vehicles (perhaps a module based on the Zvezda/Zarya design,
for example). This one is, of course, further from being off a shelf
or open production line.

Well.. There's the Progress M2, but design on it was left off
considering that it was planned to be used with the Zenit launch
vehicle.

But I guess that's up to the 'private' industry to marry the Progress
M2 with the Zenit.

Well, the question is whether returning samples/hardware
to earth is a requirement or a "nice to have".

Considering that many of the experiments conducted are probably secret
experiments labeled as something else, we really don't know on what
kind of samples they need to bring down.

Due the nature of their secrecy, the amount of the most important
samples that need to bring back are probably in small size, probably
big enough to be bring down using the Soyuz.