Moscow on Thursday declared it is now "the era of the Soyuz" after the US shuttle's last flight left the Russian system as the sole means for delivering astronauts to the International Space Station.
Far less glamorous than the horizontal-landing winged shuttle, the principle of Russia's Soyuz rocket and capsule system for sending humans into space has changed little since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit in 1961.
But after the successful landing of the US Space Shuttle Atlantis Thursday drew the curtain on the 30-year US space shuttle programme, it is now the only vehicle which can propel astronauts towards the ISS.
"From today, the era of the Soyuz has started in manned space flight, the era of reliability," the Russian space agency Roskosmos said in a statement.
This is a bell weather of where our nation is headed, IMO. Pathetic. To read the rest of the article, click here.