SPACE

they did get orbital probes and landers to Venus a whole bunch of times though

More of an engineering than a scientific feat since it amounted to not much more than getting back some quick pics before the probe was destroyed by extreme heat and pressure. NASA never bothered with Venus landers, instead preferring orbiters and radar mapping. But then, Soviet technology wasn't up to the task of radar mapping Venus anyway.

>Of course not everyone in the US was enthusiastic either about using Russian engines to launch s33krit military payloads. The reason this happened in the end was because the Shuttle program had wrecked our ability to manufacture rocket engines, nothing new had been developed since the Apollo era

During the 80s, production lines for the Rocketdyne engine family that formed the basis of the engines used on the Saturn, Atlas, and Delta families were closed down in anticipation of abandoning disposable LVs altogether, but after Challenger they were forced to restart production (the Aerojet engines used in the Titan vehicles were still in production for the time being). The shuttle main engines were also produced by Rocketdyne and shared a basic design, but were too complex and expensive to be suitable for disposable LVs. Of course, all of these designs also dated back to the 50s-60s,

So it was ultimately poor management of the US space program that led to this situation.

TBF most spy satellites launched in 2000- were probably intended to look at Mudslime cunts rather than Russia.

Whenever I see space suits that Rammstein song starts playing in my head. German appropriation of American achievements.

what Space progam

That one happened because improper, low-grade alloys were used that allowed the third stage LOX pump to disintegrate. They discovered that factory records at the Khrunichev plant had also been falsified.