Do We Still Get to Ride Putin's Rockets?

What Happens If Russia Refuses to Fly U.S. Astronauts?

With tensions escalating between Russia and Ukraine, the pressure is on President Obama to do more than issue stern warnings to the Russian government. Economic sanctions are one possible action, but one that could put the squeeze not only on Russia but also the U.S. manned space program.

Since the space shuttle retired in 2011, NASA has had no native human spaceflight capability. With no other options, NASA has relied on the Russian Federal Space Agency and its Soyuz rockets and spacecraft to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars per seat. Any strong move by the U.S. in response to the Crimean crisis could spell the end of Americans flying on Russian spaceships, at least until tensions ease. NASA and its commercial partners have some projects in the works that can fill the gap, should Russia refuse to fly our astronauts. But these are at least two to three years from operational status. Depending on how the Russian-Ukraine crisis develops, those could be two to three years with no Americans in space.

It's unfair to blame Preznit Obama for the lapse of the United States spaceflight capability.  It started to degenerate a long time before he got into office, under budget pressure from the growing entitlement state, and as a price for obvious failures in the Space Shuttle program.  But he was certainly no friend of the program. My guess is that given the choice between spending money on welfare, and sending men to the stars, he'd would prefer to garner the votes of millions of welfare recipients over a few thousand engineers and space enthusiasts.

At the moment, most of NASA's human spaceflight resources are focused on the government-owned Space Launch System, or SLS. This was conceived as a deep-space rocket and spacecraft designed to send humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the last astronauts left the moon in 1972. Although not specifically intended to send crews and supplies to the International Space Station, it could do so if necessary.

Unfortunately, SLS, which is consuming about $3 billion of NASA's annual budget, won't be ready to fly crew until 2021. And after that, it will be able to fly missions only once every four years under the current development schedule. So the multiple flights per year needed to maintain the International Space Station won't happen with SLS unless things change.

There is also a growing civilian space flight industry, led by the Bert Rutan and the Virgin Airlines Richard Branson, but it's unlikely they'll be able to pick up the slack.  Nor would Obama and NASA be especially happy with private enterprise stealing what little thunder they have left.