Marco Caceres, senior space analyst for the Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group, said there have been no public disclosures of any anomalies in the April 18 mission. Caceres, who follows the launch industry, said that even if there was a glitch with the mission, such as falling short of the intended orbit, it was a success because the SpaceX vehicle was able to dock with the space station. “Rockets don’t usually fall short in delivering their payloads to the intended orbit, but it happens on occasion,” he said. “It’s certainly legitimate for Rogers to ask.”

It's believed that ULA has enough RD-180s to continue to launch Atlas V's for the next two years, however if it is to continue to do so in the long-term it would need to develop a replacement engine, which Marco Caceres, director of Space Studies at the Teal Corporation, a US research agency, tells IBTimes UK could cost the military up to $1bn. "The real winner in all of this is SpaceX," says Caceres, who explains that the US airforce will now be encouraged to look at alternative options to the Atlas V, including SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. He continues: "From a business standpoint it's a silly move as they make money from the sale of the engine. On the other hand, from a pride standpoint, it doesn't surprise me that Putin would stop selling the engine altogether, in a way saying to the US: 'see how you like that'."

Since 2011, when NASA concluded its final Space Shuttle flight, the US has heavily relied on the rockets as a means of conveyance to the ISS. NASA forks out in the order of $70.7 million to the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos per seat on a Soyuz capsule. All parties, notes Marco Cáceres of the Teal Group, are happy: Rosaviakosmos gets some cash and NASA gets to have its astronauts on a space station that cost the US tax payer $100 billion.

“It’s dismaying that NASA officials would be directed to use this crisis to score domestic political points on behalf of the White House.” Marco Cáceres, senior analyst and director of space studies at Teal Group, is also perturbed. “It sounds like they are trying to use the crisis [in Crimea] as a way to increase NASA’s funding,” he says, “but it’s a disingenuous way of making the case, especially since there are a lot of other good reasons to increase NASA’s budget.” Currently, the agency’s budget is just under $18 billion — a level of funding that the agency has maintained more or less for the last six years. “NASA is extremely underfunded as it is,” Cáceres says. “Any recent increases have been barely enough to keep up with inflation.”

Cáceres says he is more concerned with NASA’s prediction that the agency will be able to launch from US soil as early as 2017. Even with a marked increase in NASA funding, he says, the likelihood of a US-based launch is minuscule because NASA doesn’t currently have access to a viable means of transportation to the ISS. “There really isn’t any great option in terms of a vehicle,” he says. “Even if you were to increase [NASA's] budget by 10 or 20 percent — maybe even 50 — you still wouldn’t have a good way of getting up there.” Cáceres says that although NASA is developing a heavy-lift rocket system called the Space Launch System, it won’t be ready for a crewed spaceflight before 2021.

“Resulta desalentador que los funcionarios de la NASA reciban indicaciones de utilizar esta crisis para ganar puntos políticos a nivel nacional en representación de la Casa Blanca”, dijo Marco Cáceres, analista y director de estudios espaciales de la consultora Teal Group.  Según Cáceres, “parece que están tratando de utilizar la crisis [en Crimea] como una manera de aumentar la financiación de la NASA”, lo cual, en su opinión, es una forma errónea de actuar.