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Russia Made Congress Care About Space Again

Congress has set aside $100 million to develop American alternatives to Russian rocket engines.
An Atlas V rocket. Image: NASA

Whether the country meant to do it or not, Russia's threat of preventing the United States from buying engines to make new military launch rockets has kickstarted Congressional interest in space—a move that could finally spur a new space race.

For years, Boeing and Lockheed Martin (under its launch consortium, United Launch Alliance) have used Russian-made RD-180 engines to power the first stage of the Atlas V launch vehicle, one of the most important rockets of all time. American companies bought the engines from Russia for outrageous amounts of money, assembled them with other rocket components in the United States, and used them to launch all manner of things. It worked out well.

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But two recent developments have completely, and quickly, changed that paradigm. For one, SpaceX makes rockets on American soil for much cheaper than United Launch Alliance can. Second, and more importantly, Russia has lost its damn mind—earlier this month, the country said that the US can no longer buy RD-180 engines from them for military launch purposes.

Well, if ever there were a way to kickstart American innovation and get Congress to actually do something, getting sanctioned by Russia is probably it. This week, we got as close to a confirmation that the US is space-racing again—the Senate Armed Services Committee put aside $100 million in its defense bill to build a "state-of-the-art rocket engine," according to Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

“Mr. Putin’s Russia is giving us some problems,” Nelson said in a statement. “So we put $100 million in the defense bill to develop a state-of-the-art rocket engine to make sure that we have assured access to space for our astronauts as well as our military space payloads.”

The markup of the bill was closed to the public, so we don't know exactly what the committee discussed—and the plan still has to be OK'd by the entire Senate and the House. But it's clear Congress is worried about Russia dominating space, and this move, and an earlier hearing with NASA indicate that lawmakers aren't anxious to continue doing business with Russia, anyway.

The bill still hasn't been released publicly, and it's unclear who that $100 million will go to—SpaceX is already quite angry that the Air Force gave ULA a contract without allowing it to compete for military launches; it probably won't be stoked if that money goes to ULA. With its American-made Falcon 9 rocket working just fine, it's also not obvious that America needs to start from the ground up to build new rocket engines, when SpaceX has a working design.

That's why this next space race could be between SpaceX and another company (or even the government, if the military decides to do this in-house), with the Russian conflict acting as the spark that got it started. It's not immediately obvious if the US wants merely to keep building rockets similar to the Atlas V, or if it wants to eventually blow that one out of the water—but it's clearly uncomfortable with losing its main engine supplier.

If Russia keeps imposing sanctions on the US (and if the US responds in kind), you're going to start seeing a lot more of these sorts of redundancies to make sure America doesn't lose what it's already become so used to.  For years, space enthusiasts have been looking for a way to get Congress to care about space again. Turns out, a little bullying from Russia is all that it took.