In article ,
says...

The Shuttle doing US crew exchanges reduced but did not eliminate the
need for Soyuz. They still needed "escape pod" seats, they owb seat
liners and Sokhol suits and Soyuz training.


The Shuttle did ALL crew exchanges for the first two years or so that
ISS was manned. The first crew of three came up on a Soyuz, but it
was Shuttle all the way from there until November of 2002.

This is true.

I don't
believe we were ever set up to be escaping on Soyuz. I think the
assumption was that if there was an emergency they would be retrieved
by Shuttle. At one point we talked about developing an escape
vehicle, but it, like the hab module, was cancelled.


This is quite simply not true because NASA had to be prepared to
completely evacuate ISS. The shuttle could not be flown on a moment's
notice, so Soyuz always has been and remains to this day the only escape
capsule for ISS for all astronauts and cosmonauts.

When the shuttle was not docked at ISS, ISS had exactly the right number
of Soyuz capsules to completely evacuate ISS. Furthermore, every non-
Russian crewmember was trained in Russia on Soyuz. And more
importantly, every single ISS crewmember had a Soyuz crash couch liner,
which was essential for preventing injuries during the rather rough
Soyuz landing.

Check the shuttle manifests for ISS flights and you'll see Soyuz seat
liners. Here's an article which talks about the swapping of the Soyuz
seat liners, which is the official handing over during a crew swap:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-117

From above:

Shortly after welcoming the shuttle crew, station Flight
Engineer Oleg Kotov and shuttle Mission Specialist Clayton
Anderson transferred Anderson's customized Soyuz seat liner
into the Russian spacecraft in place of that of Flight
Engineer Suni Williams. The transfer marked the official
swap of Anderson for Williams as a station crewmember.

Soyuz seat liner swaps happened on every single shuttle flight which
rotated crew on ISS.


The last shuttle flight to ISS was a bit different and included seat
liners for every single US astronaut on that mission. Here's an article
about the last shuttle flight to ISS:

http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/...s/files/sts135
_mission_preview.html

The US always needed Soyuz. Thankfully, that dependency is coming to an
end in the next couple of years.

Jeff
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