NASA's commercial program holds much promise—the development of private vehicles to transport humans into low Earth orbit should eventually bring down spaceflight costs and broaden access to space. But as is often the case with new spacecraft development, both Boeing and SpaceX have faced technical problems with their capsules.

Publicly, NASA has maintained the hope that at least one private vehicle, either Boeing's Starliner or SpaceX's Crew Dragon, would be capable of operational missions by the end of 2017 or early 2018. But that no longer appears certain—or even likely. Meanwhile, NASA still has the International Space Station to maintain and must get its astronauts there through the only means possible. Back in 2015, anticipating delays with the commercial crew program, NASA purchased transport on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft through 2018. But that may not be long enough, the agency has decided.

Seats for 2019

Last September, based upon anonymous sources, Ars reported that NASA had begun considering buying additional seats in 2019 as a hedge against further delays with the commercial crew program. Both NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the agency's head of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, subsequently denied this report.

These dismissive comments notwithstanding, a new solicitation filed by NASA on Tuesday reveals that the agency is indeed seeking to purchase Soyuz seats for 2019 (NASA will negotiate with Boeing for these additional seats, which Boeing received from Russia's Energia as compensation for the settlement of a lawsuit involving the Sea Launch joint venture). The solicitation seeks an option to buy three additional Soyuz seats in 2019 "as a primary or backup transportation capability to ensure proper launch cadence with no gaps in crew rotation transportation."

The solicitation comes just three days before Bolden, a champion of the commercial crew program who has sparred with Congress over funding, leaves office. It seems likely the notification is timed such that there still is time for Russia to build additional Soyuz launch capacity for 2019, while also allowing the current NASA leadership to bypass this politically sensitive issue before leaving office on January 20 when Donald Trump is inaugurated.

Undoubtedly, Congress will not be positively predisposed to funding requests for additional Russian seats, especially because the price keeps going up. Since the decision to retire the space shuttle in 2009, the Russian price for a seat has skyrocketed from about $30 million for a trip into orbit to $81.9 million for each of the six seats NASA bought for 2018. It seems likely the price for any seats in 2019 would increase substantially, especially because NASA would be providing less than the three years of lead time as is customary for such orders.

More seats in 2017 and 2018

The new NASA request also seeks an additional two seats in 2017 and 2018. This is possible because Russia will scale back its presence on the space station for the next couple of years, from three crew per six months to two, as it seeks to pare expenses. By reducing the number of its crew members, Russia will need to fly fewer Progress cargo ships, which deliver food and supplies to the Russian side of the station.

This Russian decision will make room for one crew member in the fall of 2017 as well as the spring of 2018, and NASA would like to buy those two rides into space, as well, to increase crew time for science research on board the station. "The purchase of these services in 2017 and 2018 will increase US crew size on the ISS from three to four crew members to maximize ISS science utilization," the NASA solicitation states. "Maximizing science utilization of the ISS is a program priority."

The additional seats for NASA and US partners would not kick in until September of this year, meaning that Fyodor Yurchikhin and Jack Fischer will still fly as a crew of two in March.