By Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks

The timing couldn't be worse for the Russian Space Agency, as one of its Soyuz rockets carrying a cargo vessel destined for the International Space Station crashed in Siberia this past week.

The Soyuz, with the best flight record of any rocket in the world, was carrying a Progress-44 capsule on a routine flight with food and supplies for the space station crew. Apparently, the third stage of the rocket failed to ignite properly about five minutes into the flight, so it didn't have enough speed to reach space and plummeted back to Earth. It's the first crash since the unmanned Progress supply missions began flying up to the Russian Salyut Space Station in 1978.

Unfortunately, a very similar type of rocket is the only way to ferry cosmonauts and astronauts to the International Space Station, now that the U.S. space shuttles have been retired.

A new three-man crew for the ISS was supposed to launch Sept. 22 on a Soyuz TMA-22 rocket, but that will likely be delayed to October, if not longer, while investigators figure out the cause of the crash. That means some of the ISS crew, who have already been up there for almost six months, will have to run their space marathon a month or two longer before coming home.

The crash, along with three other recent satellite launch failures, comes at a time when Russia is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the flight of Uri Gagarin, the first human to orbit the Earth. In fact, the rocket that crashed this week is a direct descendant of the one that carried Gagarin aloft, which is one of the keys to the Russians' success in space flight. They have remained loyal to the same technology for decades, making incremental improvements over time. The phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," certainly applies to the Russian approach to technology.

Complacency a risk for both U.S., Russia

The U.S. space program, on the other hand, has continually re-invented itself; first developing the giant moon rockets, then abandoning that system to develop the space shuttles. While successful, it all came at tremendous cost, which is one reason the Russians are still flying in space today and the Americans are not.

But perhaps this reliance on the old way of doing things is one of the reasons behind the recent Russian failures. It's not the technology itself that is to blame; it's human complacency.

Following the crash of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986, when a simple O-ring seal failed on one of the rocket boosters, investigators found that NASA managers had been gradually lowering safety standards, based on past success. They had been warned by the manufacturer that cold temperatures could cause the O-rings to fail but decided to launch on a frigid morning anyway, because the rings had worked fine on cool days in the past.

Complacency was involved again in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed by a piece of foam falling off the main fuel tank and punching a hole in the wing.  Foam always fell off the tanks during launches but had not done serious damage in the past, so the problem was not addressed until disaster happened.

Following both of those shuttle disasters, which took the lives of 14 people, space shuttles were grounded for years while modifications were made to both the spacecraft and the management structure. Soyuz rockets are now grounded, and NASA is naturally nervous because it's the Americans' only ticket to space at the moment.

The Russians will take a close look at their tried and true technology, but, hopefully, they will also examine the human side of doing things to ensure that standards remain high. Even after 50 years of leaving the Earth, space flight is still not easy.