I wonder how impractical it would have been for NASA to keep a shuttle around (until there is another agency providing redundancy) for emergencies such as this and just stop the scheduled mann spaceflights.
The shuttle costs half a billion dollars per launch and the Soyuz has been rock solid in terms of reliability, present issues excluded. I don't think there was anyone seriously proposing keeping a shuttle around as a backup for the Soyuz.
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