Soyuz and Apollo Dock in Space

July 17, 1975

I grew up amid an atmosphere of euphoria over space flights. It was taken for granted that every Soviet child wanted to grow up to be a cosmonaut. Every rocket launch generated great feelings of community and absolutely genuine excitement (in sharp contrast with the displays of enthusiasm orchestrated by the government on certain occasions). Space flights either brought people out onto the streets or kept them glued to their television screens. We knew all the first cosmonauts by name and face, and we could recite elements of their biographies.

Only much later did I realize that a frantic space race was underway between the Soviet Union and the United States. Sergei Korolyov, director of the Soviet space program, made a huge push to put a human into Earth orbit before the Americans managed this feat. With Yuri Gagarin’s April 1961 flight, Korolyov won that leg of the race by a few months. This was followed by the epic effort to put humans on the moon. As soon as President Kennedy declared in September 1962 that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it became clear that the rivalry had entered a new stage. Everyone was sure that the USSR would win this round as well. In fact, we were pretty sure our country would consistently come out on top in the Space Race.

In 1935, the children’s writer Sergei Mikhalkov (father of the renowned filmmakers Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky), whose writing was always in step with the times, came out with a rhymed story titled Uncle Styopa, about a towering, kindhearted friend to local children who winds up setting off to serve in the navy, where he, of course, turns out to be a model sailor. In 1954, a sequel had Uncle Styopa serving as a policeman. By the sixties, alas, Uncle Styopa was too old for the author to send him off into space, but it turned out that he had a son, Yegor, who, like his father, was a true bogatyr – an oversized, strong, and courageous hero of the sort that populated traditional East Slavic legends. Yegor had been born a whopping eight kilograms (17-plus pounds) and quickly grew into an Olympic champion able to lift 330 kilograms (726 pounds). When asked by journalists about his dreams, he replied: “I want to fly among the stars.” So, after his weightlifting successes, Yegor trains at a “semi-secret base.” Here, Major Yegor Stepanov prepares for the journey to the stars he had been dreaming of. This new story ends with a promise that we would soon hear a report that “Cosmonaut Yegor Stepanov/Sends regards to the moon from Mars.” Sure – soon the Soviet Union would make it not only to the moon, but to Mars.

That was not exactly how things turned out. The Soviet lunar program was fraught with delays and mishaps, some tragic. A lunar squad was formed, and all cosmonauts dreamed of joining it. The problem was producing a rocket that could get them to the moon and back. Meanwhile, the US Apollo program was already well underway, and on July 20, 1969, as the entire world followed the progress of Apollo 11 with bated breath, people in the Soviet Union had to settle for terse news reports. The landing itself was shown, but that was it. How could it be that the Americans had beaten Major Yegor Stepanov to the moon?

By the late sixties, the Soviet lunar program was coming apart at the seams. The 1966 death of the space program’s head, Sergei Korolyov, was a major blow to the country’s grand ambitions. The rocket testing was not going well. Worst of all, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, one of the main candidates for a moon landing, had died when his module crashed after reentry from near-Earth orbit. More prosaically, the country simply lacked the cash to pursue a moon mission.

I am now struck by the fact that, back then, with the exception of the Apollo 11 crew, I didn’t know the names of any American astronauts. It’s not that there was an official prohibition against mentioning them in the press. Anyone who wanted to hunt down information about them could find it in magazines such as Technology for Youth («Техника-молодежи»), but they weren’t talked about. Then again, with the exception of Gagarin, few in the United States could probably name any cosmonauts either.

In the seventies, strange things began to happen. I clearly remember how, in 1972, at a writers’ resort in Koktebel, everyone gathered around a single television utterly stunned as they saw an airplane land at Moscow’s airport and none other than the president of the United States emerged. Could such a thing really happen? Before the spring of 1972, it seemed more probable that a flying saucer would land in Moscow than a plane carrying Nixon. Later, Brezhnev made a trip to America, and the two countries began signing all sorts of treaties.

With “the easing of international tensions” («раз-рядка международной напряженности» – better known in the States as détente), suddenly, like a fairy-tale flower sprouting amid the dreariness of Soviet life, signs of cooperation between the two countries, such as the appearance of “progressive” American films in Soviet movie theaters, began to crop up. And then came a momentous decision: the superpowers would join forces in the sacred and prestigious area of space flight. The Soyuz-Apollo program (or, as it was known in America, Apollo-Soyuz) was born, culminating in the docking of a Soviet spacecraft with an Apollo module in near-Earth orbit on July 17, 1975, 45 years ago.

This was no simple matter: the tremendous technical differences between the two systems made the docking difficult and dangerous, but when politicians want friendship, everything else is forced into place. All the technical obstacles were overcome and an adapter module was developed to equalize the different atmospheres of the two crafts. Soon, the two commanders, Alexei Leonov and Thomas Stafford, were shaking hands in space and the two crews were paying each other visits. During the mission, Brezhnev barely managed to mutter a boilerplate statement addressed to the two crews, while President Ford’s phone call with them sounded optimistic and sincere. The difference was striking.

By now I realize that, from the standpoint of astronautics, the docking didn’t represent a great technological revolution, but watching it on our televisions was extremely heartening, both because of the advance in space exploration, which seemed very important at the time, and because of the breakthrough in Soviet-US relations, which, we thought, portended great changes in our lives.

This sense of optimism, reinforced by the Apollo Soyuz cigarettes being sold in shops (a very hot item, which smokers were quick to point out were actually produced by Philipp Morris), persisted for a while. But, ultimately, that breakthrough didn’t lead anywhere.

In four years, Soviet troops would enter Afghanistan, and the idea of easing international tensions was abandoned, along with all disarmament initiatives and, of course, collaboration between the countries’ space programs. A few years after that, another president, Ronald Reagan, would announce plans to launch a space-based missile defense system. The Star Wars program, targeted against “the Evil Empire,” showed yet again that the Soviet Union could not compete in space, or anywhere else for that matter.

In the years since, great strides have been made in international space travel. Astronauts from all over the world, including the United States, spent time on the Mir Space Station, and now Russia is playing a key role in the International Space Station. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is planning to send people to Mars within a few decades.

From today’s perspective, the Soyuz-Apollo docking may seem a bit primitive, but remembering it still gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. It is comforting to recall that, amid the Cold War, two superpowers could suddenly decide to extend each other a conciliatory hand, however short-lived that friendly interlude may have lasted.

They could be friends again, if only they chose to.