> We have two countries that tried to build them and in the end it is still 60s tried and true technology that puts man in space. Some of those reasons are pric

> We have two countries that tried to build them and in the end it is still 60s tried and true technology that puts man in space. Some of those reasons are price, some politics. One country succeeded, and the other stopped being a country. In neither case did the idea fail. > Another way to put it, if the idea is so complicated that nobody got it to be implemented properly and no country is actively working on a new design, I say there is something with the idea. No, that's called learning from experience. There's nothing wrong with the idea. It's an idea still actively being explored by a variety of people as well, and the tech developed for the Shuttle programs lives on the SLS and Ares vehicles that NASA is replacing the Shuttle with. > one can also say well hypothetically if NASA had an equivalent program to Soyuz maybe they would have had more money in the pocket to build an even bigger and better ISS, or ISS would have been there a lot sooner. We can state with certainty that the ISS would have happened a lot LATER if all we had was Soyuz vehicles, if it would have happened at all. Soyuz lacks the capacity to build the ISS or to do space walk repairs. There's a reason Proton was used more than Soyuz was in the construction of the ISS. Soyuz is good for some things, building space stations, repairing satellites, or getting to the moon/mars are all not on that list. Also you do realize the Shuttle wasn't the only NASA vehicle, right? NASA does have Soyuz-class vehicles, such as the Atlas or the Delta (Atlas-Centaur alone has more flights than the Shuttle)