So, I think it really opened the door into the next phase of the program over the next two or three years. There has been a lot of criticism in the U.S. about putting Russia in the critical path of the station. This launch and the docking will help show that the decision to do that was a risk worth taking, and the quality of the hardware suggests that the module was worth waiting for. Of course, it would have been better if Russia could have provided the money and a reliable Proton on time. But this is still rocket engineering.
Cooperation is hard.
There will be more problems in the future. One has to distinguish between the service module, which is absolutely critical . So, another reason why is this launch and hopefully the successful docking is so important is because this is the one single thing that Russia has to provide to the program that is absolutely essential. Other essential contributions, of course, are the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, which are supposed to get supplies up and get the people down in emergencies for the next few years. But they are not quite of the same essential character as Zvezda.