[Cold Heat]

Soyuz is technologically ahead of any shuttle.

LOL! The Soyuz is comparable to Apollo without the frills. It can't carry large payloads, It can only carry 3 to four people like sardines. It is nothing but a tin can on a bunch of bottle rockets.

I think a space plane is more the proper vehicle. Large payload capacity. (it could be built to about any size) A re-usable airframe and no expensive polluting boosters.

Larger transport vehicles could be built in space if a dock were available. That is why a large payload capacity is needed.

Rocket boosters are terribly obsolete.

[Destro]

The Russians have the largest payload capacity boosters period. Larger cargo payloads than the space shuttle. I do not know the name of this rocket off hand though.

[Regulator]

For a "tin can on a bunch of bottle rockets" it does just fine. The Soyuz line now has in excess of 1000 launches and miniscule failure rate. Nothing like building a thousand or so of something to get it right.

The Russian philosophy on space vehicles is build them simple and strong, and test the crap out of them. That is very similar to the old American attitude as exemplified by the Boeing development of the B-29, the B-47, and the B-707.

The Soyuz rocket and capsule system does its job just fine: it gets people into space and back down again reliably. That's it. That's all you need to do. They don't try to fly an incredibly complex machine operating near the edge of its capability. There's a lot to be said for that.