It is the funeral dirge of NASA. Terribly tragic that we have to hitch a ride with the Russians now.
The technology in the photos is 20-30 years old and should be in a museum.
Space should no longer be in the hands of government agencies. Precision manufacturing and computing is so much cheaper now that private enterprise will soon be going into space on a regular basis.
I predict it will become profitable to mine asteroids and other planets within 2 decades. Space tours will become affordable to the upper middle class. With robotics and remote manufacturing/mining, it would not be difficult at all to colonize planets.
Once the benefit to the public exceeds the investment, private enterprise grows that industry at an exponential rate that government can never match. NASA gave us experience and got us ahead before the computing/manufacturing was in place. However, IMO, private enterprise would have caught up to where NASA is today in 5-10 years. Remember, it is only now beginning to become cheap enough to go into space.
There are big plans in the Space industry and I plan to be part of it. We will get there eventually but I’m just hoping Barry the Blower and other leftists don’t delay our progress so I live to see it.