Andrew Matseevsky — Do you recall the U.S. being humiliated between 1975 (the year the Apollo program ended, with the last flight participating in the Apollo-Soyuz mission) and 1981 (the year of the first Space Shuttle flight)? After all, the U.S. lacked the ability to deliver a man into orbit during that period of time, or to bring such a man back down to the Earth.

Of course not. We were in the process of building a new spacecraft, which would have different abilities than the Apollo.

Similarly, the U.S. is now engaged in building THREE separate manned space vehicles (the SpaceX Dragon 2, the Boeing Starliner, and the Orion), two of which should be flying with crews by next year — within the same six year interval that occurred back between 1975 and 1981. All of them will have different capabilities than either the Shuttle or the Soyuz.