>It is not as if the US had no capability gaps. For a long long while they had to buy seats from Russia to get their astronauts to the ISS. There is a slightly

>It is not as if the US had no capability gaps. For a long long while they had to buy seats from Russia to get their astronauts to the ISS. There is a slightly different situation here, which is that the Space Shuttle was kinda... not that safe. I didn't like that either but for human rated spacecraft the requirements are all more strict, for good reasons. Unfortunately, those reasons are mostly things like Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. But overall I think I agree. >That level of conservativism doesn’t sound entirely healthy to be honest. We weren't convinced it was either. Did you know they don't make parts for pen plotters anymore? Somehow the customer was surprised by this. We did manage to convince the right people there to allow the switch eventually but it was a struggle.