oh no... the shuttles are extremely old. They were originally scheduled (when they were first built) to be retired in the early 90s. But when the Cold War suddenly came to an end, the Space Race took a back seat because Russia couldn't afford to race anymore. They needed to be retired, it was well past their time. Now, what the budget problems are doing, is preventing their successor from being ready to go now. And now we get word that the Russians are halting all their Soyuz flights while they try to figure out what went wrong with their unmanned supply mission two weeks ago. The people on the ISS are pretty much stranded, they have their lifeboat, but no new supplies are coming up anytime soon. (or Astronauts for that matter) In fact, SpaceX may very well be the next ship to visit the ISS, maybe NASA can pay SpaceX to hitch a lift and get the people up there some much needed relief at that point.