RE: US, Russian capsules vie for orbital domination

Flightglobal:

The history of human spaceflight has seen just seven operational crewed capsules, today six more are in development and three are private ventures......

Author: Rob Coppinger

Date: 09 September 2009

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Orion lite makes a good deal of sense; especially if NASA does go ahead on the Bigelow ISS module. Although that extension through to 2020 needs to get under way a bit sharpish! With 3-4 prime crew complement - remember Apollo could accommodate six in emergency conditions - Orion SHOULD weigh a lot less. As for Almaz: it actually never carried crew into orbit , merely acted as an extension to Salyut 7 - or so Ken Gatland's Illus' Encyclopaedia of Space Technology had it. Soyuz: what can one say: the oldes and best IMHO - and still capable of circumlunar flight as originally intended. When are they going to offer a moon flight for say, $50M? Dragon...well lets wait and see if the hypemeisters can deliver as advertised. Pity the COTS-D alternate: Orbital, don't have an LV capable of lofting much more than a Gemini-Lite. But after the Augustine report , these will be the only way Americans will go to space after Shuttle retirement - to be extended? We'll see...

I think you left out a couple of spacecraft currently in development. Orbital Sciences has announced a manned version of the Cygnus, and Interorbital is planning to launch their two-man CM-2 on their Neptune 1000 launch vehicle by the end of 2011 (with a six-man CM-2 to be launched on their Neptune 4000 at a later date). Now, as to whether either of those will be successfully developed, I have no idea. But they're in the works.