Over the last few years the Russian economy has been in such a perilous state that space projects have become less of a national priority, particularly space projects that are a collaboration with a former enemy. Many of the NASA and Boeing engineers have come to know and respect the Russian way of doing things even though it is often different from the way American space hardware is designed and manufactured. By and large, it is driven by the Russian culture that people tend to stay in a job for a long, long time. If someone gets a job designing a certain type of hardware, they may stay in that job for twenty years. That rarely happens in America.
People move on, people change.
So I think that's why you see more change, more different designs coming out of American companies than you do out of Russian companies. Randy Brinkley was very sympathetic to the individual Russians he worked with. I work with the Russians, I talk to them almost on a daily basis, I've spent a tremendous amount of time with them in the last three and a half years, I've come to know them on a personal basis and as a result of that I have high respect for them. They're very professional, they're very capable, they're very proud of their accomplishments in space, they're also going through a very difficult period. The people that I work with, my counterparts, have gone for months without being paid.