... the politics from the USAmerican side of the ISS operation would be gutting. In effect, if NASA allowed two Soyuz to dock with ISS they would be handing de facto control of the station to the Russian paymasters (mostly Europe); & given the amount of money which NASA has sunk on Bjo Trimble's little mail in campaign to Ron Reagan, that would be a tough pill to swallow.

Organisationally, getting the extra Soyuz up there would probably take a year or more as the Russians rounded up customers for the ISS to help pay for the new service. One could expect all of the countries currently shafted by NASA's unwillingness to keep up with its ISS obligations to at least consider buying an extraNASA ISS trip (especially as CNES has already shown how easy it is to jump the queue to ISS by bypassing NASA completely), with Canada, Italy & Japan (as the most inconvenienced by the present fiasco) being the most aggressive in finding an alternative; so drumming up custom is unlikely to be a problem. Oddly enough, this competition from space agencies will likely limit even further the space for so-called tourist flights in the short term; but if the Russians are able to set up a factory line for Soyuz, short term cost may be outweighed by long term gain.

I guess the question now is: what will NASA do to try & prevent this?; or even: >is< there anything NASA can do to prevent this? Given that it's the US in default, there may not be much they can do short of reinstating ISS funding.

Robert