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Soyuz blasts off for space station with Japanese astronaut, 2 others

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© 2012 AFP

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The final launch of a U.S. satellite in July 2011 left nations dependent on the reliability of Russia’s Soviet-era space achievements while governments and private companies scramble for new ways to launch humans to the station and beyond.

I believe that should read "The final launch of the U.S. SHUTTLE........"

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Roscosmos had earlier this year released a somewhat vague mission statement through 2030 that emphasised the new voyages to the Moon and the further scientific exploration of Mars while downplaying human spaceflight.

So what are these people going to be doing up there beside getting hair cuts and watching the Olympics (same TV coverage we will have in our living rooms)?

I'm all for space exploration but the U.S has spent close $75 billion on this turkey and we can't even get there by ourselves anymore, we gotta hitch a ride on Soyuz.

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Russia’s underfunded Roscosmos agency, meanwhile, has been hit by turmoil that has seen changes in leadership and bickering with other segments of the space program—particularly those responsible for updating the Soyuz.

That is not true. Now Souz it next new modification.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Techall...unhappy that American astronauts have to hitch rides with the Soviets? Irony aside, and it is massive, you should blame the spineless American Congress for cutting funding that ended NASA's space shuttle programs. Americans spend more per capita on shoelaces than they spent on the space program...

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NASA’s Sunita Williams and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Yury Malenchenko of Russia

It wasn't only an American astronaut "hitching" a ride.

That said it is a national shame that the U.S. government didn't plan ahead for the end of the Space Shuttle program. And those rides up there are not free, they are well paid for.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@Ranger_Miffy and Frank Vaughn

I agree with both of you.

I do not claim to be an expert on this but I have read that most of the low gravity experiments carried out on the ISS could have been conducted in a shuttle cargo bay if it was fitted out to do so.

It is in fact a national disgrace that the U.S. paid more than half of the total cost of ISS and we don't have a maned launch platform to get to it at this time. By the way, the President sends his budget to congress and they vote on it, so enough blame to go around.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

"The final launch of a U.S. space shuttle in July 2011"

This is all Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's fault.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The "Orion" Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is a planned beyond low-earth orbit manned spacecraft that is being built by Lockheed Martin for NASA based on designs and tests already completed as part of the now-cancelled Constellation program, development for which began in 2005 (Bush administration) as the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

On 11 October 2010, with the cancellation of the Constellation Program, the Ares program ended and development of the original Orion vehicle was retooled into the MPCV, planned to be launched on top of an alternative Space Launch System. The Obama Administration's proposed cancellation of the Constellation program began in February 2010 and was signed into law 11 October.

The MPCV's debut unmanned multi-hour test flight, known as Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1), is scheduled for a launch aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket in 2014.The first manned mission is expected to take place after 2020.

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I still remember when Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviet Union back in 1957.

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CrazyJoe: I remember that too, I was 8. We all went out at night to see it but, as it turns out, we were seeing the booster that went into about the same orbit. Sputnik was much too small to see from earth.

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I just remember watching it on the news when I was 5 when my family lived in Yokohama.

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techall, what is taking them so long? The more they engineer it the more it is prone to failure.

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