No More Free Soyuz Rides as of 2006

Was surprised I didn't see this pop up here (or maybe I missed it, but this
story is a shade old now):
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/04123....jzqrpfv5.html

Okay, by my counts in the ISS program Cosmonauts have hitched rides on Shuttle
flights ten times. Not all as members of ISS expeditions and on three of those
flights, two Cosmonauts were aboard.

Counting the launch of Expedition 1 on a Soyuz, Americans have ridden five
Soyuz rockets to ISS. By 2006 at least one more expedition will be launched
aboard Soyuz (at last check Expedition 11 was slated to go up on Soyuz). That
would total six. With that in mind, I am curious as to NASA's reaction to this
statement as American shuttles have, in addition to flying Cosmonauts up, also
bore much of the burden of building ISS.

I remember after the loss of Columbia, and the subsequent decision to try and
retire the Shuttle by 2010, some suggested keeping the shuttle out of ISS crew
rotation duties and leave that task to Soyuz to try and cut back on some
shuttle flights. Was this decision by the RSA partially a final "hell no" to
that idea? Was the initial agreement between the US and Russia that crew
transfers would be an American responsiblity?

Anyway, just throwing some thoughts out...

-A.L.

"MasterShrink" wrote in message
...
Was surprised I didn't see this pop up here (or maybe I missed it, but
this
story is a shade old now):
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/04123....jzqrpfv5.html

snip

Anyway, just throwing some thoughts out...

The reality is that what people think about this "new development" doesn't
much matter. The fact is that this "new development" stems from the
original agreement between the US and Russia for ISS.

The fact is that we're paying for our bad planning and execution. The
original agreement was reached assuming that we'd have a US CRV operating by
now. Due to budget overruns, the CRV was cut long ago.

Essentially we signed an agreement that let us use Soyuz for a period of
time. The Russians never agreed to let the US use Soyuz indefinitely.

Funny how many in the US are whining about how good the Russians have become
at introducing capitalism in their space program. It seems odd for a
country that used to believe that capitalism was superior to communism.

Jeff
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