America will once again lunch their own astronaut from their own soil.
https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1251178705633841167
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'Murica…
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It was always silly the overwrought statements in the interregnum between manned launches. We were ALWAYS going to resume manned launches. The break of a few years was never that big a deal.
I disagree. Being dependent on the Russians makes us a second rate nation. Or at least made us a second rate nation while we were essentially helpless.
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The United States has officially been on the Metric System since 1893. Any conventional unit in the United States is defined in terms of its Metric counterpart.
Not to mention that we lost the $125 Million Mars Climate Orbiter due to conventional/Metric conversion error that should never have been necessary to make. That any rocket science (or any science) is being done in conventional units is stupid.
Also, Liberia and Myanmar have not been to the Moon.
Hardly helpless. There is no vital defense need to have a human launch capability at the moment. And we gave up human launch capability by choice for a predefined history.
We COULD have had the capability at any time during that period, we just chose not to. And the Russians knew we could rapidly restore our manned flight capability if need be.
Israel and many other countries do not have manned space flight capability. That does not make them second class nations. The United States did not become a second class nation by voluntarily giving up manned space flight capacity.
I would be FAR more worried about CHINA’s unmanned space capability than on the fact that we depended on Russian rockets for a small handful of years. 
Who said anything about vital defense?
National pride means something. Taking a backseat to Russia is shameful.
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We will just have to agree to disagree on this point.
As a nation, we are well ahead of Russian in countless metrics.
Grabbing a ride on their rockets is no more shameful than calling a Lyft or Uber because you don’t desire to drive for the time being.
Instead of each nation trying to display the largest phallus to the world, nations should work together on the peaceful use of space.
Again, we should just agree to disagree on this issue.
I have one word for you: Sputnik
The last space shuttle launch was in 2011, less than a decade ago.
Russia is a 2nd Rate nation. Being dependent on a 2nd Rate Nation makes us even worse off.
