With the retirement of the space shuttle, expected in July, the U.S. will have to pay the Russian space agency to take astronauts back and forth from the station until the MPCV is ready.

Until then, NASA will pay Russia $750 million for a dozen round trip seats aboard the Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

But Nixon was unwilling to pay for both, so postponed the station (a cousin of which exists today, thanks in no small part to the Russians, in the form of the ISS).