Rand Simberg

For the past two decades, NASA has partnered with the Russians on the International Space Station, as a result of the decision by the early Clinton administration to make it a joint venture after what was thought to be the end of the Cold War. The idea was to give Russian space engineers an alternative to selling their services to bad actors such as North Korea and Iran (some wags called it "Midnight Basketball for the Russians").

The initial cooperation was in building the facility itself (the Russians provided the initial module for construction in the late nineties). But during the two-and-a-half year gap in Shuttle operations after the loss of the Columbia in 2003, and now with the retirement of the Shuttle fleet itself almost three years ago, we have been totally dependent on their Soyuz launch system and capsule for astronaut access to and from it, and lifeboat services in the event of an emergency.

Since the Russian intervention in Ukraine began weeks ago, the nation's space agency has been whistling past the graveyard of potential implications for human spaceflight. In a news conference back on March 4, NASA administrator Charles Bolden declared: "I think people lose track of the fact that we have occupied the International Space Station now for 13 consecutive years uninterrupted, and that has been through multiple international crises," implying that this one would be no different. Both the U.S. (and Japanese and European) crews and the Russian crews are dependent on each other for the system to function. NASA has comforted themselves with the knowledge of how much pride Russia has historically taken in its space activities. The agency has repeatedly insisted that deteriorating relations on the ground wouldn't extend into orbit, and reportedly, they haven't done so yet.

But events took a turn for the worse on April 29th, when Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin made a veiled threat to cut off ISS access to the U.S., following the announcement of new State Department sanctions against Russia, including the potential cut off of satellite exports for them to launch. It wasn't a formal warning, but rather a tweet that NASA might want to consider using "a trampoline" to get its crews to the station. On Tuesday, he upped the ante, declaring that Russia would end the ISS partnership in 2020, which could effectively end the program, though NASA had previously announced an extension of it to 2024.

Rogozin, an unrepentant Stalinist (he reputedly once hung a picture of "Uncle Joe" on his office wall), oversees the Russian space program. He is considered by many to be an attack dog for Vladimir Putin. It may be bluster, or it may be a real threat. If it's the latter, it's not one that we should have to tolerate, except for ongoing bipartisan fecklessness from Congress.

There is only one realistic way to end our dependence on the Russians for space transportation: accelerate the Commercial Crew Program established by the Obama administration as a follow-on to the successful Cargo Resupply Services contracts initiated in the Bush administration (a CRS flight launched a couple weeks ago and is at the ISS currently). For over four years, the administration has been requesting the funding needed to get at least one, and preferably more than one provider capable of delivering crew to and from orbit. Every year, Congress has refused to adequately fund the program, instead diverting funds to the Space Launch System, a rocket with no defined mission other than keeping some of what remains of the former Shuttle work force employed. As administrator Bolden lectured them a few weeks ago in hearings on the Hill, their failure to provide requested funds has slipped the operational date from what would have been next year, out to at least 2017.

Instead, Congress continues to tell NASA to "save money" by narrowing down from three competitors to a single one immediately, using typical socialist arguments (from Republicans and Democrats alike) of the "inefficiency" of multiple providers. This, of course, ignores the fact that twice during the Shuttle program we were unable to get astronauts to orbit for over two years, because there was no backup to it after the Challenger and Columbia accidents, and that cost reduction comes only from ongoing competition.

But even that funding level wouldn't be necessary if Congress didn't have such skewed priorities. It is needed because of congressional insistence on changing from the successful CRS program model, which provided results at much lower costthan traditional NASA procurements, to go back to the standard NASA procedures that increase costs and delay schedule, ostensibly in the name of "safety" (despite the fact that those procedures themselves resulted in the loss of two orbiters and the deaths of 14 astronauts in the Shuttle program). In fact, in the NASA authorization bill marked up by the House space subcommittee on the same day as Rogozin's initial threat about trampolines, the phrase "safety is the highest priority" explicitly appears in reference to commercial crew. That implies, of course, that actually getting crew to orbit is a lower one, and that the priority can be achieved by not flying at all. Had it been the motto in the sixties, we'd have never gone to the moon.

There's an old story about a man who arrives late at a hotel, and is informed by the desk clerk that there are no rooms available. "Well," he asks,"what if I were the president? What would you do then?" The clerk avers that, in that circumstance, he might be able to accommodate him. "OK, then give me the room you'd give him."

Astronauts are paid to risk their lives. They accept it as part of the job. We have invested decades and many tens of billions of dollars in a space station that we cannot currently get to without buying rides from an adversary in a renewed Cold War with temperature rising. If it were really important to end our dependence on them, you can bet that NASA would figure out a way to do it and quickly, by rapidly modifying a SpaceX Dragon like that currently at the ISS. And in fact, on the same day that Rogozin tweeted his threat, Elon Musk of SpaceX responded with his own: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed." He announced that he will do so at the end of May.

But in its actions, Congress sends a clear message that it is not important. They could fix that, though, with a simple amendment to that bill when it gets to the House floor. Replace the word "safety" in that absurd phrase, and make it "having multiple means of getting Americans to orbit on American launch systems is the highest priority." And tell Rogozin to get his own trampoline.

Rand Simberg is an aerospace engineer and author of the forthcoming Safe is Not an Option.

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