Why does America still use Soyuz rockets to put its astronauts in space?

By G.F.

IT WAS the sort of failure that rivets the world: two minutes into the launch of a Soyuz spacecraft from a site in Kazakhstan, the mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was aborted. Fortunately the two men on board, one each from Russia and America, were able to make a safe, if high-gravity, re-entry and landing. Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos), and a canny politician himself, says crewed missions will remain on hold until an investigation reveals what went wrong. Given that the Russian Soyuz system is presently the only way to get people into orbit, this creates a situation that could leave the ISS empty from December. And America is powerless to do anything. How did it end up relying on Russian rocketry to gets its astronauts to the space station?

The answer dates back to the development of America’s Space Shuttle programme. It was conceived in the late 1960s as a way to give NASA a set of inexpensive and reusable spacecraft. In fact, by the time of the last shuttle mission, in 2011, America had ended up paying an average of $1.5bn per flight. NASA had expected to use the Constellation project to replace the shuttles for ISS missions by 2014, and later to fly astronauts to the moon. But it was cancelled in 2010 as costs ballooned. Seeking other options, the space agency has had some success in getting private firms such as SpaceX and Orbital ATK to deliver cargo to the ISS. And in 2014 it awarded contracts to both Boeing and SpaceX to develop craft to get astronauts there. The date at which those craft were due to be available for flight testing has slipped, though, to 2017, then 2018, and now April 2019 for SpaceX and mid-2019 for Boeing. The US General Accounting Office says 2020 is the earliest date it expects actual flights could reach the space station, assuming all continues to plan.

In contrast to the cost overruns and cancellations of the American programmes, Soyuz has been an unabashed success. Crewed flights started in 1967 with a fatality, but only one subsequent mission (Soyuz 11 in 1971) led to the loss of lives. Nearly 140 missions have been flown. The aborted flight on October 11th was only the fourth failure relating to launch or re-entry. A similarly designed cargo spacecraft, the Progress, has had over 150 uncrewed missions with just three failures. Russia’s willingness to ferry passengers—including space tourists—gave NASA and other agencies a useful fallback option while politicians mucked about with budgets and priorities, and paid for a meaningful portion of its annual space budget. The main difficulty for foreign astronauts using the Soyuz craft is that they must learn Russian to a good standard. But Russia said recently that its obligations to take American astronauts to the ISS would expire in April 2019. The statement’s finality owes much to the rather chilly state of relations between America and Russia. Back in 2014 Mr Rogozin became one of those Russians on whom America imposed sanctions. He tweeted shortly afterwards that NASA should deliver its astronauts to the ISS “with a trampoline”.

The investigation by Roscosmos into the recent failure will probably extend beyond December—the date by which the three astronauts presently on the ISS must use a Soyuz descent vehicle before its corrosive fuel renders the craft unusable. They must also worry about a now-patched hole in the descent craft that Mr Rogozin has suggested might be the result of sabotage. The crew have sufficient supplies to stay longer, but are likely to come back. Given that no manned flights to the ISS are imminent, NASA’s reliance on Soyuz could mean the station becomes “decrewed” in 2019. It can operate unattended for long periods. But there is a strong chance that no humans will reach it again until at least 2020. This could ultimately lead to the abandonment of the ISS even before 2025, when American funding is expected to run out.