Enter the Dragon -- The Economist
The war in Georgia is prompting a rethink of America’s route into space.
IN TWO years’ time America’s space shuttle is supposed to retire. It is a complicated bit of technology—expensive and unreliable. And every launch raises fears of another accident. Something cheaper, simpler and safer, known as project Constellation, is planned to replace it, but this will take time to build, and probably will not be operational before 2015. That means five years during which NASA, the country’s space agency, will have no means of its own to ferry its astronauts between the ground and the space station that it spent so much money helping to build.
Until a few weeks ago, the plan was to buy tickets on Soyuz, Russia’s system of manned space vehicles. That was what happened when the shuttle was grounded after the Columbia accident in 2003. America spent hundreds of millions of dollars for flights on Soyuz.
Buying rides on Russian rockets requires approval from Congress. At the best of times, Congress takes some convincing, but now that America and Russia have fallen out over Russia’s war with Georgia, the chances of a multimillion dollar shopping spree to Moscow look less likely than ever. And although political moods may change, time is running out if NASA is to put an order in for the missions it will need from the end of 2011, when its contract with the Russians expires. Each vehicle takes about three years to build, so America needs to decide soon whether it wants to buy from Russia.
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