In article ,
Robert Love wrote:
So NASA has said "No" to European and other outside participation in CEV/
Ares. Does anyone care to speculate why?

Unfortunately, the US has learned the wrong things from ISS: instead of
"choose partners carefully; trust them enough to put them in the critical
path so they actually save you from having to do some things; don't keep
switching plans on them without warning", the lesson drawn has been "can't
trust them dagnab furriners".

There were/are *two* foreign countries in the critical path on ISS. Only
one has caused significant problems. (And even that wasn't always entirely
their fault. Zvezda, aka the Service Module, got a lot of blame for
delays, but in fact the US modules slated to follow it were about as far
behind schedule, and for less pardonable reasons too.)

Were there any official statements about why we declined partnership
with the other nations?

I don't believe anybody has bothered to explain it; it's just taken for
granted that foreign partners would be a bad idea. And of course, because
nobody has actually spelled out the reasons, it's impossible to assess how
sensible they are.
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