THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The US military and spy business rely on Russian rocket engines to send our spy satellites and other hardware aloft. Seems we haven't been able to build a powerful and reliable rocket engine for some years now.

U.S. military officials and space-industry experts say it’s high time the United States had an industrial base that produced rocket engines that can do what the Russian engines do. Congress is in the process of authorizing money for such an effort. In theory, it’s a no-brainer: Why rely on Russians for such an integral element of the U.S. national security program?

But everything is highly inertial in the world of rocket science. The creation of powerful rocket engines in the United States could take several years at least. If the supply of Russian engines were cut off in the meantime, the U.S. launch program would face delays, with attendant costs to the taxpayers of billions of dollars, according to a recent U.S. Air Force study.

Currently the United States is planning 38 launches of the Atlas V, the main stage of which uses the Russian-made, liquid-fueled RD-180 engine, but it has only 16 of those RD-180s in the stockpile, the study said.

Another complication is that both the United States and Russia have enjoyed doing space-related business with each other for a number of years. The Russians like the hard currency coming into their country, and American aerospace companies like the reliable, robust Russian hardware.

Although the central planners of the Soviet Union struggled to create simple consumer goods, they excelled at ordering up large things like military weaponry and rocket engines. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. policy encouraged government agencies and aerospace companies to snap up Russian hardware and keep the Russian engineers busy, lest they find employment in countries hostile to U.S. interests.

Long-term U.S. plans to produce a domestic cousin to the RD-180 never got off the ground. The aerospace sector discovered that it was comfortable with the workhorse Russian engines when it came time to launch sensitive missions like spy satellites. The Atlas V rocket has made more than 50 consecutive successful launches using the RD-180. NASA and other government agencies rely on the Atlas V for some of their scientific payloads.

“The former Soviet Union invested in technology. Our country has not invested in that technology for now going on 30 years,” said Mike Gass, the chief executive of United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that owns the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and has a virtual monopoly on national security launches.

“One thing about the Russians, it may not be the most elegant and subtle design, but man, the thing works. It’s a tank,” said another executive in the U.S. launch industry, requesting anonymity because of the delicate nature of the issue.

The United States and Russia continue to cooperate in operating the International Space Station with their other partners. But on May 13, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the country’s space sector, said at a media briefing that his country would no longer sell rocket engines to the United States for military purposes. On his Twitter account he made a reference to the U.S. reliance on Russian rockets to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station, saying the United States should consider using a trampoline.

Once upon a time we had the skills and the industry to produce them. One upon a time we had a government that was capable and interested in governing and maintaining our country. Then St. Ronnie was elected.