The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Foreword
[vii] In the early days
of the space age, when costs for exploration were projected, members
of government and the scientific community often suggested that those
nations with the greatest experience in space flight band together in
joint programs. The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, both heavily committed to space travel, were usually
identified as the countries that should cooperate rather than
compete. But, as long as the machines to accomplish such feats were
little past the concept and drawing board stages, cooperative efforts
would have been possible only with great difficulty, if at
all.
By the end of the 1960s, some form of
cooperation in manned space flight made more sense from a technical
standpoint. Both nations had achieved some space goals and both had
mission-proven spacecraft. Joint development of a new spacecraft
would have been no easier at this stage than in the early years. But
if each nation furnished a craft and together the nations figured out
how to use them in a cooperative orbital flight, a useful step toward
learning to work together in other fields would be taken. Even this,
however, was a monumental task.
Communication was a bigger problem than
technology in developing the joint program - and it was not
necessarily a language problem. The philosophies of spacecraft
design, development, and operations were so widely separated that a
great chasm of differences had to be bridged before the technical
work could begin. Several Soviet and American Working Groups, as this
book relates, spent long hours, over many months, negotiating and
reconciling the differences to produce a successful Apollo-Soyuz Test
Project mission.
I had some concerns at the beginning of the
cooperative program. We in NASA rely on redundant components - if an
instrument fails during flight, our crews switch to another in an
attempt to continue the mission. Each Soyuz component, however, is
designed for a specific function; if one fails, the cosmonauts land
as soon as possible. The Apollo vehicle also relied on astronaut
piloting to a much greater extent than did the Soyuz machine.
Moreover, both of these spacecraft, in their earlier histories,
suffered tragic failures. By the time of the mission, all aspects of
the two programs (hardware as well as procedures) that would be
needed in the joint venture had been discussed frankly.
[viii] The exchange of
people was perhaps a more significant gain than coming to some mutual
understanding on how programs are conducted in the two countries and
working out a joint flight project. Only about a hundred American and
no more than two hundred Soviet managers, engineers, pilots, and
technicians ever came into direct contact with each other, but
millions of their countrymen watched with interest and discussed the
activities, the families, and the ways of life (their similarities as
well as their differences).
During the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and even
afterwards, there were charges that the program was an American
technological giveaway. These charges were unfounded. NASA's conduct
of its space programs has been covered by the media in great detail
and descriptions of its systems can be found in many technical
journals in libraries and bookstores. However, no one can build an
Apollo or a Soyuz merely by reading a book or visiting a factory.
These craft are the products of many, many incremental steps, lasting
for years, and of the development of a personnel reservoir capable of
managing a space program from concept through operations. Both sides
did gain some new knowledge, but the benefits accrued by working
together probably outweigh any potential threat. Apollo-Soyuz was the
product of an evolutionary process of nearly 20 years. This book
traces the events that led to this cooperative flight and then
introduces the reader to five men, from two nations, as they worked
together in the vastness of space.
Christopher C. Kraft, Jr.
Director, Lyndon B. Johnson
Space Center
November 1977
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