Why the Ukraine crisis may be a good thing for the US space industry

It was the cold war that fueled the space race of the mid twentieth century. As the cold war drew to a close in the early 1990's, so did the space race. We are now in a strange situation where America, once a space superpower, not only has no manned space vehicles, but for the first time in decades, does not even have a TV show set in space.

As of this writing, America is relying on Russian Soyuz craft to get their astronauts into space -- a state of affairs the baby boomer generation would find bizarre. Also as of this writing, a crisis is brewing in Ukraine -- crisis that might very well end with Russia annexing a good part of the former Soviet republic and provoking the United States and its allies into a response. The response may not be military, but it may be enough for Russia to close the doors of its cosmodromes to American astronauts. The Deputy Prime Minister of Russia implied just this when he recently suggested that America send its astronauts to the International Space Station by way of trampoline.


Fortunately, America may not have to resort to such unconventional methods of transport. SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, also co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, has been developing a crew module that would sit atop their already fully operational rockets. The only problem? The technology is not yet human-rated. Unlike in the days of the space pioneers, a disaster involving humans -- even one that does not cost any lives -- is likely to receive a large amount of negative media coverage, putting pressure on NASA, SpaceX and the government to "do something". This could very well explain why the Dragon crew module project is moving slowly even now (the crew module is mostly ready, but first flights are planned for around 2016). The very first Apollo mission ended with the death of all crew members, while still on the ground. Were something like that to happen today, the entire project might face cancellation.

But now, america may have incentive to take more risks, astronauts willing.