[Satellite News 08-15-08] Industry analyst Tim Farrar told Satellite News that NASA’s dependency upon the Russian Soyuz space capsules and rockets to carry astronauts to and from the space station could leave the organization vulnerable to setbacks in its space station programs.
    Intense fighting between Russia and the country of Georgia has caused diplomatic pressures between the U.S. and Russia. A second ceasefire was announced Aug. 15, but tensions remain.
    “The authority for the U.S. to pay money to the Russians to use the Soyuz expires in 2010 and the U.S. Congress has been trying to extend that,” Farrar. “With recent developments, there may be some pushbacks. NASA is vulnerable to disruption and delay with these politically-driven cooperative agreements with Russia.”
    A five-year gap exists between the scheduled retirement of NASA’s space shuttle in 2010 and the debut of its replacement in 2015. NASA has attempted to close this gap by accelerating the initial launch of the new shuttle to 2013 but revealed that inadequate funding and technical issues pushed the program back to at least September of 2014.
    Farrar is not concerned with Russian backlash to the U.S. support of Georgia.
    “I do not think we are going to end up in the situation we had with China, where they imposed restrictions to use their launchers for a number of years because of political issues. I doubt that type of attitude applies to the Russians. It would be too disruptive commercially to their U.S. interests, for relatively little benefit, to take that type of action,” Farrar said.
    For the U.S., Farrar says that there are no strong domestic launch alternatives for companies that rely on Russian services if satellite companies needed to quickly fill breeches in service. However, Farrar mentions that some good may come out of this conflict for the commercial industry.
    “Long-term political tensions may actually benefit the U.S. commercial launch market because it may motivate more investments to vamp up U.S. launch systems,” said Farrar.