Just joking I am sure they take them back for examination and maybe to reuse some of the parts.

I’m not a lot older than Don Petit and there are plenty of times I’d love to be carried around instead of self-locomoting. And I don’t have the excuse of months in zero-G. Old age, I am finding, is not for sissies.

Jeff Wright,

Good question about the returned capsules. Given Russia’s increasingly parlous finances, I wouldn’t be greatly surprised if they are stripped for usable parts to be incorporated into “new” capsules.

The Soviet Union, then Russia, used to do that “put it in a park” thing with at least some of its old spacecraft and military aircraft stuff, but I doubt that’s still going on. For one thing, the stuff they did do that with wasn’t well-maintained thereafter and was pretty soon more an embarrassment than an inspiration. And in the second place, Russia barely has any youth to inspire anymore. At the rate Russia is burning up its under-50 male population, there won’t be any youth in Russia pretty soon for lack of live men to father them.

I think it would be a good idea to put spent capsules and plane cockpits in playgrounds, so as to inspire youth.

And a huge fist bump to Don… I will consider myself lucky if I can still go fishing when I have turned 70…. Never mind completing missions in space!

A genuine inspiration to us all!