SPACE: How Badly Can Russia Put The Squeeze On NASA? “On the manned spaceflight front, NASA is now completely reliant on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft and rockets to get its astronauts to the International Space Station. . . . On the unmanned front, United Launch Alliance (ULA), the near-monopoly created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin for launching satellites for the Pentagon, depends on the Russian-built RD-180 to power the first stage of its Atlas V satellite launcher.”