As three more crew members arrived the International Space Station (ISS) on December 23, another unmanned Soyuz rocket ended up failing to orbit, scattering pieces of a Russian military communications satellite across Siberia. It's the second major failure of the workhorse Soyuz in a year, once again questioning the reliability of the Russian space program and penny-wise/pound foolish decisions by U.S. Congress.

Russia knows it has problems, but hasn't come upon solutions to fix them, with the head of the Russian Space Agency calling for a new, younger workforce as the current staff is old and there are few mid-level people to pick up the slack.

“The space branch is suffering a crisis. We must resolve this situation and give way to the youth… Perhaps it's time for reshuffle,” said Roscosmos agency chief Vladimir Popovkin, as reported by RIA Novosti.

Over the past 13 months, Russia has had a series of launch failures. On December 5, 2010, a Proton launch carrying three navigation satellites crashed into the Pacific Ocean.   February 1, 2011 saw an upper stage failure of a Rokot, putting a geodesy satellite into lower orbit. August 18, 2011 saw a second Proton launch failure, with an upper stage failure putting the Russian Express-AM4 communications satellite into the wrong orbit. And there's also the failure of the November 10 Phobos-Grunt Mars launch, its upper stage failing to start, leaving the $163 million dollar probe in a decaying orbit with a January re-entry and burn up; the remains of the spacecraft are expected to crash in Afghanistan.

However, it was the failure of the Progress 44 cargo mission to ISS on August 24, 2011 that threw Russia and NASA into crisis mode. Manned flights on the Soyuz -- the current way to get crew to the space station now that the space shuttle has been retired -- were put on hold until the cause of the Progress crash could be found, with the possibility of having to evacuate ISS looming large.

 The failure of the Soyuz rocket was attributed to a blocked third-stage fuel line, with Russian officials saying they had implemented tighter quality control measures and NASA officials saying they were "confident" as the Russians resumed Soyuz operations with a successful Progress cargo flight on October 30.

Two successful manned Soyuz launches in November and December have ISS currently staffed at its optimum six person crew level, but the latest rocket failure and public dismay by Russian officials will likely put another pause/re-evaluation on all Soyuz flights. The clock for de-manning ISS has not officially started, but the next three man crew rotation is scheduled for March -- not a lot of time for Russian officials to make more changes or for NASA to reassess the safety of manned Soyuz launches.

Russia's Soyuz is the only way to get people to the space station now that NASA's space shuttle is retired. NASA is currently funding development of U.S.-based commercial manned spacecraft through its Commercial Crew (CCDev) program, but Congress has significantly underfunded the effort. NASA requested $850 million this year to move CCDev efforts forward, but Congress only provided $406 million.

House hearings on CCDev have resulted in contentious back and forth between Representatives and NASA officials. NASA officials clearly warned Congress that underfunding CCDev would result in a delay for bringing U.S. commercial efforts forward, leaving no alternative but to purchase more Soyuz transport seats to ISS.

Due to underfunding and the uncertainty of budgets over the next few years, NASA will now conduct the next phase of CCDev using Space Act Agreements (SAAs), rather than a more formal contract mechanism agency officials had claimed they needed so could have more control over spacecraft development for safety reasons.  

House Science Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX) wasted no time in criticizing NASA's decision to use SAAs -- a fascinating position since he did little to put more money into CCDev.  

"In order to reduce risk and cost, and to minimize further schedule slips, it would be my hope that two commercial companies would team together to jointly develop a cost-effective and safe launch system," said Hall in his statement.  

Some have suggested that Hall is posturing to enable a single-source award to Boeing (News - Alert) and Lockheed Martin -- both with large presences in his district -- and lock out other companies from offering competition. NASA wants to keep multiple vendors involved in CCDev as long as it can to encourage competition and keep costs down, rather than handing one company a monopoly early in the program.