NASA's space dreams fall apart without Soyuz

NASA's Commercial Crew Program for the development of private manned spacecraft to deliver  astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) does not work the way the Americans would like it to. NASA has flown SpaceX's Crew Dragon to the ISS before, and there is another flight scheduled, but this does not mean that NASA will not have to ask for seats on board the Russian spacecraft to get to the ISS. According to NASA's recent press release, the agency, through commercial company Axiom Space, bartered a seat on board the Soyuz 18 spacecraft for astronaut Mark Vande Hei. In exchange, NASA will provide Axiom Space a seat on a US commercial spacecraft in 2023.NASA was hopeful that by now it would no longer need to use Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to bring astronauts to the ISS. As the agency plans, in 2021, the Crew Dragon by SpaceX and the Starliner by Boeing were supposed to deliver NASA crews (and other crews as well) to the ISS and back. However, it just so happened that Boeing failed to bring the Starliner project to a successful finale, whereas the project developed by SpaceX is far from perfection too.The two countries have intensified their negotiations during the recent months with a view to exchange seats, rather than buy them, for the sake of efficiency and timeliness of space flights. Russia's Roscosmos said, though, that the American spaceships were not reliable enough for practical use. Therefore, the flight that astronaut Vande Hei will have does not seem to be part of those negotiations.This was confirmed by Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin.