“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.

Indeed, titanium supply constrictions could become a sore point for companies such as Boeing if more sanctions are applied, several analysts note, meaning at least higher prices for the element. “That is going to be a key concern,” says Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group. The aerospace industry is one of the top customers for titanium alloy products, with newer commercial aircraft using far more than previous generations due to its favorable strength-to-weight ratio. Boeing has forecast it would spend $27 billion on Russian titanium supply, design engineering and services “over the next decades.” In July 2009, Boeing and VSMPO-Avisma, Russia’s largest titanium producer, started a 50/50 joint venture, Ural Boeing Manufacturing (UBM) in Verkhnyaya Salda.

On the negative side, aerospace firms like United Technologies could face higher prices on commodities, especially titanium, because Russia is one of the largest producers of the metal. And if natural gas exports were curtailed from Russia to Europe, that too would increase costs for company operations there. “Its economy is mostly a gas station and a mine,” Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group based in Fairfax, Va., said of Russia.

Two companies vying with SpaceX for a NASA commercial crew program – Boeing(BA:US) and Sparks, Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp. – - may also find themselves relying on Russian engines, because of their plans to use Atlas V rockets, said Marcia Smith, a former director of the space studies board at the National Research Council and now editor of Arlington, Virginia-based spacepolicyonline.com. Even so, mutual dependencies in space may make this one area that’s immune to disagreements on the ground. “The Russians are making money off these sales,” said Marco Caceres of the Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group. “It would make sense from a political standpoint to snub us, but from a financial standpoint, it’s not so good.”

If Russia did cut off supplies of the RD-180, it might be more symbolic than actually painful for the US, according to Marco Caceres, director of space studies with the Teal Group. “The Atlas V isn’t launching that much, so short-term impact would be minimal,” Caceres said. “The long-term impact would be that Atlas V would have to find another engine and that wouldn’t be easy.” The biggest impact might come not to US military launch, but to the corporate firms that provide it. Right now, military launch is provided either by ULA’s Atlas V or Delta IV. For years, the US has wanted to maintain two families of launch vehicles in case one failed. However, SpaceX looks poised for certification this year. The combination of having a third launch option, along with the lack of RD-180 parts, might lead to the end of the Atlas V. That may be all hypothetical, however, as Caceres doubts Russia would block sales of RD-180s, primarily because of the financial impact. “It’s not to the benefit of the Russians to do this. These are engines that bring in hard currency to Russia, the same way Russian oil and gas does,” he said. “Russia doesn’t really export much else of any consequence. ”