The Lesson of SOYUZ

It is ironic. 20 years ago Americans were accusing Soviet Union of copying the Space Shuttle design for their own multipurpose space system Energia-Buran (for which I happened to design the guidance & navigation algorithms of the atmospheric stage of the ascent trajectory).

Today NASA for their newest manned space system, SLS-Orion, is essentially "coming back" to the old Soviet design of Soyuz rocket and spacecraft. Soyuz, which survived several generations of the manned US space programs - Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle - is a perfect example of successful implementing the principles of Systems Architecture: modularity, extensibility, scalability and evolvability.