Back in 2004, President Bush
announced that NASA's aging
space shuttle program would be
retired in 2010 and — eventually
— replaced by a plan to return to
the moon. At the time, NASA
realized there would be a four-
year gap between the space-
shuttle retirement and when the
new manned space transport
system would be in place.
But at that point, it didn't seem
like a big problem for NASA to
ask Russia to transport US
astronauts to and from the space
station in the interim. Relations
between the two countries were
friendly — Bush was telling
reporters that he'd looked into
Putin's eyes and "got a sense of
his soul." What's more, NASA had
relied on Russian transport for 29
months after the Columbia
disaster in 2003, when the
shuttle program was put on hold. Development of NASA's
replacement vessels, however,
has taken much longer than
anticipated — the agency won't
have a replacement for the
shuttle until 2017. There are a
few reasons for that. Bush's
moon program was cancelled by
Obama in 2010 and replaced with
a plan for private companies to
shuttle astronauts. Meanwhile,
NASA's budget requests to pay for
the new program were repeatedly
underfunded by Congress.
"It's put us in a vulnerable
position," says John Logsdon,
former director of the Space
Policy Institute.
This isn't the only way that the
US spaceflight program is
dependent on Russia. The Atlas V
rocket — built by Lockheed
Martin and used to launch
American military satellites and
civilian payloads — runs on a
Russian-built engine.
When the Atlas V was being
designed in the 1990s, Lockheed
Martin got a waiver from the
usual Defense Department
requirement that critical
components be manufactured in
the US, partly because the
Russian engines were better and
less expensive than American
options, and partly because of
political motivations.
"There was a fear that if we
didn't find some way of keeping
Russian rocket scientists
employed, they would go off and
work for Iran or North Korea,"
says James Lewis, a national
security and space analyst. When construction of the
International Space Station was
begun in 1998, it was seen as an
embodiment of the new age of
cooperative space exploration — a
permanent scientific alliance
between a number of countries,
but especially longtime rivals US
and Russia. The two countries
launched separate segments of
the station that were assembled
in orbit.
Obviously, the tenor of Russian-
American relations has changed,
but in space, the two countries
are still codependent. NASA
astronauts travel to and from the
station — used mostly for
scientific experiments on long-
term human spaceflight — on
Russian Soyuz rockets, launched
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome,
in Kazakhstan, the cradle of Soviet
space exploration since the 1957
launch of Sputnik.
THE WHOLE THING IS DESIGNED
TO OPERATE WITH BOTH
AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN
INVOLVEMENT
The next launch is scheduled for
May 28, when a rocket carrying
American, Russian, and German
astronauts
will take off to replace the
current crew. The astronauts will
live together in extremely close
quarters for about six months,
and if anything goes wrong,
they'll depend on a Russian
spacecraft docked at the station
to serve as an emergency
lifeboat.
But the Russian astronauts are
also heavily dependent on NASA.
The US segment makes up the
majority of the space station, by
area. Its solar panels provide
most of the electricity, and its
gyroscopes are crucial in
controlling the station in orbit.
On a broader level, the space
station represents one of the few
prestigious international projects
that Russia is currently involved
with, something that probably
appeals to Russian leaders
.
As a whole, the space station
takes instructions from command
centers in Houston and Korolyvov.
The whole thing is designed to
operate with both American and
Russian involvement, and it's hard
to imagine it surviving otherwise. A few recent events have raised
the possibility that political strife
between US and Russia may spill
over into the space relationship.
Last month, as part of the
sanctions process, NASA
announced that it would be
suspending all non-essential
contact
with Russia. That order had lots of
exceptions — including anything
space station-related — but it's
still not conducive to a good
working relationship in space.
A RUSSIAN MINISTER TWEETED
VEILED THREATS TO EXCLUDE
NASA ASTRONAUTS FROM FUTURE
TRIPS
In response to the sanctions,
Russian Deputy Prime Minister
Dimitry Rogozin tweeted "I
suggest to the USA to bring their
astronauts to the International
Space Station using a trampoline,"
earlier this week.
Russia hasn't moved forward with
any plans to withhold space
equipment or delay the May 28
launch, but Rogozin's comment is
an obvious concern. "That's the
first high-level negative comment
from either side regarding space,"
Logsdon says. "It's certainly not a
good sign."
These events — and the Ukraine
crisis as a whole — seem to have
made the need to develop
American manned space transport
more urgent. The current plan is
for NASA to award a grant to one
of three private companies
(Boeing, Sierra Nevada, or
SpaceX), so they can upgrade
their cargo-carrying rockets for
human use.
The day after Rogozin's tweet, a
House subcommittee fully
approved a $785 million NASA
funding request
for the private space flight plan
— an increase from recent years
— and added money to the
Defense Department's 2015
budget
specifically to develop an
American replacement for the
Russian-made Lockheed Martin
rocket engines.

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