Originally Posted by luke strawwalker

Interestingly enough, GE's concept for the Apollo spacecraft was a virtual copy of the Soyuz, complete with the steep-sided "headlight shaped" (for those old enough to remember what sealed beam headlight bulbs used to look like back before halogens took over the industry) reentry module and an orbital module mounted atop it for operations in space after ascent, and discarded prior to reentry... So the Soyuz design works, and it works very well.