I just don't understand one thing. If the Russians could somehow save the Soyuz, how come USA didn't save anything.
Well, Soyuz is a real workhorse plus more reliable and favourable than any other manned system ever build and operated until today. Soyuz will be updated (as usual) and might even fly to the moon in future.
The Shuttle eats up a lot of money and man power. It is highly costly and high-maintenance. And it's a 100% low earth orbit system. Like former NASA Admin Michael Griffin said: the Shuttle was not the right path. If you want to get out of orbit or if you want a manned system that can be updated without changing the infrastructure and eating up tons of extra budget, the Shuttle really is around the neck of NASA.
The reason why NASA did not save any system for now is that NASA never developed a cheap and reliable system for the wide future comparable to Soyuz. Mercury and Gemini just was short-term programs to gain knowledge, learn how to live, navigate and rendevous in space in preparation of Apollo. And Apollo also just was a short-term program. It was made for a big show of landing on the moon manned to beat the Russians in arms race finally. Apollo really wolfed NASA and a lot of US money and man power. The Saturn V was a money-hungry beast. Its small sister, the Saturn 1B, also wasn't cheap at all. It was launched only 9 times. It was just another expensive rocket actually nobody was interested in after Apollo. And Skylab just marked the end of a great era. That space station was made up of Apollo remains due to dramatic budget cuts. It was just to fill the gap between Apollo and the Shuttle if you will. Actually NASA planned to use Skylab along with the Shuttle program. But due to the Shuttle program delays they had to abandon Skylab, after they noticed that it got out of control once they powered the station up again after some time in orbit. History does not repeat, but it is similar quite often
STS initially was believed to be a robust and profit making design for a bright and shiny future. At the end the only bright and shiny future was for example Hubble and the ISS beside a few other missions. But STS-51L and STS-107 really casted a dark shadow on the program, while STS-107 was the beginning of the end. The Shuttle did never become what it was intended to become, but still it reamins the pinnacle of space flight engineering and the most awesome flying machine humans have ever build until today.
That's what NASA did not manage until today: to build a reliable and cheap system. That's when Russia comes into play. Russia often gets underestimated a lot anyway. Although that country had been driven by turbulent political events within the last centuries and did not have a good press in our believed "objective" press, they did some very impressive technologies and programs. They did not land on the moon manned, but they've build Buran which could even fly unmanned (and had a much higher payload capability than the US Shuttle). But sadly the program suffered from the breakdown of the Soviet Union. They build the most powerful rocket in the world until today: the N1 moon rocket (no, the Saturn V was not the most powerful rocket ever build as often called wrongly; it was the most powerful rocket that reached operational status). They've build the biggest airplane which still flies and holds the record: the Antonov 225 (it is biggher than the Airbus A380 in both, size and weight). Russia build the biggest artificial object in space in the 1980's: the Mir station. Russia has had much more experience in manned long term missions than NASA had when they started to build the ISS together. And last but not least: Soyuz, which operates for decades very very reliably without any losses. Just like ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter said: you can ride on it with closed eyes and fully trust on it. Some Russian technology really is robust and reliable. The Antonov 225 and Soyuz are the still living examples. And they're catching up with Airbus in civil aviation meanwhile (fly-by-wire, cockpit systems similar to Airbus cockpit systems etc.) and so beat Boeing technologically.
Soyuz is that much reliable and cheap that ESA has bought it and will launch it (unmanned) from Kourou, French Guyana:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiana_Space_Centre#ELS_.2F_Soyuz_at_CSGWell, to talk about the future of manned US flights: Orion really could become a manned NASA vehicle for the wide future for the first time. They only have to get a reliable and cheap launcher working...
