Apollo- Soyuz, as I lived it a half century ago Pt5

 

HUMMMM… WHAT TO DO?

Following Thursday’s historic docking and handshake in space I was scheduled to work a half-day on Friday. Thereafter I had a choice: I had the next two-and-one-half days off and I could either stay home in my room in the basement monitoring ASTP, or I could go up to the lake and spend time with my new girlfriend. 

Hummm… what to do? 

It was a choice that is rare for a space geek; either stay home and watch for spaceflight news snippets on the TV, or go up to the lake and be with a gorgeous blond babe. 

What would any all-American, red-blooded 17-year-old, die-hard space-buff do?

RIGHT ! And we didn't listen to "Sweet Home Alabama" all day long... we listened to Bad Company, (sorry Kid Rock.)

When I returned from up on the lake two-and-one-half days later, I did my best to catch up on the latest ASTP news. I had wanted to keep my tapes complete while I was gone and so I needed a member of the family to help. Mom was out of the question, referencing some of my “smart assed” behavior earlier in the mission. Dad was always working and my sister was preparing to dance on a local showboat. That left my 12-year-old brother; the one person I knew I could depend on.

Whenever I politely asked Craig to assist me in something like this he always did an outstanding job. Craig, even at age 12, was more savvy and dependable than 99 percent of the adults I had met. That was, of course, if I asked politely. If I ordered him like an older brother, the results were different. Once after a hockey game we were sitting in the Blue Line Club with friends and I demanded that Craig “Go get me a glass of water!” Moments later he showed up smiling with a cool glass of crystal clear water. I took a drink and he asked me if I liked it? I said that I did and he responded that he had gotten it out of the toilet.

So it was that I asked Craig, very politely, if he would help me and record the stuff from ASTP that I may be missing while I was up at the lake. He agreed to man my recording equipment in the basement while I was gone. The results were amazing! He captured moments that I would have otherwise missed and scanned all three networks for tidbits. Now there would be no gap in my ASTP tapes. I am proud to say that my brother and I have always been the best of friends. I just never order him to fetch me a glass of anything.

While I had been up at the lake I'd missed the real "heart" of the mission. On Apollo 8 the "heart" had been the Christmas eve broadcast live from lunar orbit. On Apollo 15 the "heart" had been watching the crew take samples at Elbow Crater with the LRV's camera broadcasting the view down Hadley Rille. Skylab's "heart" was having astronauts Conrad and Kerwin fix the jammed SAS wing during and EVA. Additionally, the "heart" was served up when the crew of SL-4 stuck it out for a world record in orbit. Now, ASTP's "heart" was a made for TV handshake followed by the exchanging of some politically approved trinkets. Up at the lake, I wasn't missing much.

Although much of the smiles and posing looked very contrived and practiced, which they actually were, Stafford and Leonov made it work.

The fact is that Stafford and Leonov, two military pilots from opposing ends of the cold war, became true life-long friends.

Leonov and Stafford messing with a docking simulator decades after ASTP.

No sooner had the first transfer of crew taken place than President Ford was on the phone to the orbiting crew. Due to a communications glitch that was haunting Soyuz, Slayton was asked by Mission Control to allow Leonov to use his Snoopy Ears headset so the the cosmonaut could hear the U.S. President.

Another aspect of the ASTP show was the fact that some of the photos were very candid. 

Here we see Stafford and Slayton having some squeeze treats. Leonov, having remembered a toast he gave back in 1965 in a small gathering of three astronauts and two cosmonauts where he said that some day they should gather together in space and have a drink, in preparation for ASTP he took two tubes of soup and had them marked "Old Vodka." Early in the ASTP orbital flight he and Stafford were scheduled to have a meal together. He handed Slayton the tube and basically said "a toast!" Stafford knowing that consuming booze in flight was a huge no-no, yet not wanting to offend his Russian friend, took a careful sip... expecting Vodka, yet getting soup. Deke once described the jokester Leonov as the Soviet's version of Wally Schirra.

Stafford, Leonov and Slayton show that you can fit three into the Soyuz Orbital Module... as long as one is half way into the tunnel to the DM. So... I guess it's really two and a half.

A very accomplished artist, Leonov shows off a pencil sketch of Stafford. Note, again, that he is wearing an Apollo "Snoopy ears" headset rather than the standard Soyuz headset.

Deke Slayton had been a major player in the U.S. space program, but somehow he found a form of personal validation by flying on ASTP. In the world of flying, those moments come to us all, yet they are always kept very private, although highly satisfying.

Whoever came up with this symbolic shield-like thing was likely quite proud to see it fly. The rest of us had a sort of, "what the hell is that thing" impression.

Here we see Kubasov signing another artifact. 

Mission Control as Stafford and Leonov give a news conference. Look closely and you can see just how non-intense Mission Control is at that moment.

The two days of joint operations which involved shifting and shuffling of crews, both astronauts and cosmonauts were in their respective spacecraft and the hatches were closed out by 4pm Houston time.

WATCH FOR PART 6

Apollo- Soyuz, as I lived it a half century ago Pt4

 

HAND-SHAKE

Thursday, July 17, 1975, was the historic day when a Soviet spacecraft would link up with an American spacecraft. I was lucky enough to be working an early morning half-shift that finished at 11:00 and gave me plenty of time to get home and watch the event. The networks were on the air starting at noon in an all-out effort to cover this rendezvous and docking.

In the late 1960s to early 1970s even the most rabid civilian space buff in the free world knew very little about the Soyuz and the Soviets were quite happy to keep it that way. Now, thanks to the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, that was all changed.

Soyuz consisted of three modules...

...a service module like Instrument-Assembly Module...

...a Reentry Module...

...and an Orbital Module.

One stand-out feature of Soyuz was that it operated by getting much of its electrical power from solar panels, rather than Apollo which used fuel cells.

Now, we western space-buffs were going to get to see the inside of Soyuz on live TV.        

Indeed, the whole world was watching. Presidents, First Secretaries, diplomats, reporters, spies, generals and just regular slobs like me were all watching the docking. Oddly, it was only the space-buffs who were scratching their heads and asking, “What’s the point?” Why was it that exploration and science in space was considered to not be newsworthy, but a common rendezvous and docking, something that the United States had been doing since 1966, was now hot global news? Indeed, we space-buffs thought that, but we still watched.

Soyuz was the passive vehicle in the rendezvous and Apollo was the active spacecraft. As the rendezvous proceeded, the people involved spoke to the people from the other country in that country’s language. Thus, Stafford spoke to Leonov in Russian and Leonov spoke to Stafford in English. It was a bit strange because when Stafford spoke a Russian translator took what the astronaut was saying and gave it to the U.S. audience in English with a Russian accent. Of course, the same was true for Leonov, only the Soviet public probably got an Oklahoma accent.

As the two spacecraft captured in a hard dock Leonov sang out that Soyuz and Apollo were “shaking hands.” We saw cut-away video of the space centers in Russia and the United States with controllers standing and applauding. At that moment my thoughts were of Deke Slayton. Even as a 17-year-old I knew what he had been through. He had been forced to sit in Mission Control for more than two dozen dockings in space while wishing he had been on every one of them. This time it was everyone else in Mission Control watching him. It is rare that a very large wrong is made right in such a public way. I wondered how many of those people in Mission Control were applauding as much for Deke as they were for ASTP.

Docking was achieved by way of an androgynous docking collar attached to the Soyuz and the forward end of the DM. The aft end of the DM had the standard Apollo drogue/probe unit.

The probe in CM 111 was actually the same probe that was used on Apollo 14. Normally, Apollo CM vehicles jettisoned their probe with the Lunar Module's ascent stage. Because Apollo 14 was the first mission to have problems with docking capture on the way to the Moon, NASA had their probe mechanism retained and returned for engineers to study in order to seek out what the problem may have been. They found nothing, so the probe was reused for ASTP.

Other than the docking adapter, the only other new piece of spaceflight hardware for ASTP was the DM.  It was required because the Apollo CM started on the pad with a sea-level atmosphere which was a nitrogen-oxygen mixture. As the Saturn booster ascended, that cabin was vented down to 1/3 sea level, pure oxygen. This was a direct result of the Apollo 1 fire which was fueled by pressurized pure oxygen. The Soyuz, however, flew with sea level nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. If the Apollo astronauts had been exposed to that, they would be forced to spend a long period after each exposure slowly purging nitrogen from their blood to avoid something similar to "the bends." Thus, the Soviets also agreed to reduce the Soyuz atmosphere to just 2/3 sea level. The DM allowed the crews to make the transition in an air-lock environment that was good for both sides. The DM was designed and constructed by Rockwell International Space Division.

Three hours and five minutes after the capture, Stafford and Slayton in the DM, closed the hatch to Apollo and allowed the atmospheres to adjust, then opened the hatch to Soyuz on live TV. In the distance through the adjacent tunnel we could see the two cosmonauts moving inside the Orbital Module (OM) of the Soyuz. There was a communications glitch that would haunt the entire duration of the docked activities and we could not hear the cosmonauts speaking at first. After a short delay, Leonov floated into the tunnel and he and Stafford shook hands in a very contrived manner as they exchanged happy greetings that gave you the impression that the words were printed on a note card. A moment later Slayton also floated into the camera’s view and shook Leonov’s hand. It was all highly symbolic, well scripted and made for the cameras.

Eventually Stafford floated through the tunnel and into the Soyuz OM. And then the TV switched from the American feed to the Soviet feed from the repaired equipment aboard Soyuz. The Russian ground technician who had installed that camera must have sighed with relief; there would probably be no trip to the salt mines for him. He may simply be reassigned to polishing railroad rails for a living.

Apollo- Soyuz, as I lived it a half century ago Pt3

 

SON OF A BITCH

Next on the checklist of major events in the ASTP flight was the transposition and docking required to extract the Docking Module (DM) from the S-IVB. The DM was the only piece of real spaceflight hardware constructed for the mission. It was needed because the atmospheres used in Soyuz and Apollo were very different. I'll go into it in far more detail in a later post.

The event took place away from the best ground stations. In fact Mission Control only had communications off and on for a few seconds. The crew, however, videotaped the entire event to transmit later to the ground. The transposition and docking was shot with two cameras. One was the same camera that was used during the boost to orbit and was focused on Stafford and Brand. The extraction of DM was shot with a second camera directed through the rendezvous window. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the camera pointed at the crew which had a voice track. The conversation below was taken from that video. Stafford did not have a fun time while flying the transposition and docking because the sunlight reflecting outside was blotting out his Crew Optical Alignment Sight, (COAS).

 The stand-off cross that would normally have been mounted on the Lunar Module, were now mounted on the docking module truss in the S-IVB stage.

“Okay I’ve got full bright on that COAS,” Stafford reported.

“It’s right out there where he ought’a be” Brand quipped.

“Oh, what’re we, in CMC AUTO?” Stafford checked, “hey Vance?”

“Okay,” Brand replied reading from the checklist, “ENTER, plus-X, three seconds…”

“How did we ever…(garbled)…” Stafford complained, “God damn, I can’t see my COAS… it’s so bright I can’t see the COAS! Son of a bitch! Okay, we can close on him… let’s get this…”

“Did ya’ do…” Brand began, “plus-X three seconds?”

“Got it,” Stafford replied quickly.

“Okay, I got your DAC (Data Acquisition Camera) changed,” Brand reported calmly.

Stafford was clearly flustered in the video, as he moves a great deal in his seat and strains to see the COAS.

“Dick we’ve got a problem,” Stafford reports sharply to CAPCOM Dick Truly, “it’s so bright in that background I can’t see my COAS.”

Apollo, however, was on the ratty edge between two ground stations and Houston apparently did not hear Stafford’s report.

“COAS, or target?” Slayton asked.

“COAS!” Stafford answered.

“Huh.” Slayton replied in a very mid-west Deke manner.

“Oh shit!” Stafford growled with resignation. Then he changed gears and went back into mission commander mode, “How’re we doin’ on attitude?”

“Okay,” Brand reported, “yer’ attitude and uh…”

“Somehow that’s not lookin’ right… now,” Stafford mumbled.

“Okay, got the DAC goin’…” Brand reported.

Highly flustered by the fact that our planet’s nearest star may be about to throw a monkey wrench into the rendezvous and docking of the one human who has done more rendezvous and docking than any other human, Stafford began to go into high bit-rate pilot mode.

“Okay… are we’re supposed to go over that (garbled) some more, hey Dick, we’re off, to… get back on to the computer, we’re not to the pitch attitude yet…” Stafford stammered in one long breath.

“Okay,” Brand replied calmly, “we’ll… do it again.”

“CMC in AUTO,” Stafford called, “okay take it and we’re maneuverin’…”

“Okay,” Brand said, “we should be.”

“(garbled) stopped it earlier,” Stafford said with a calming sigh in his voice as his COAS comes back into view.

Houston can be heard in the background offering a time to LOS and some information on TV settings which Stafford “rogered,” and then he gave a relieved call back to Mission Control,

“And I finally got the COAS back in, finally!”

I transcribed all of that for you, the readers, for one very important reason: other than that final COAS call, none of the above conversation appears in the official NASA onboard voice transcript. When I first saw it on the raw video I thought that it was very human and very Tom Stafford, but when researching the transcripts for this text, it was simply missing. One may think that it was because of the salty language involved, but there are other areas in the transcript where the exact same curse words are used and they remain in the transcript. Why this section is missing is for you, the reader, to ponder. My own theory is that the transcriber took a potty break and left the tape running.

Extraction of the DM took place during a period of an hour and 51 minutes in which the Apollo was out of communication with Mission Control. The process went smoothly. The reason for the Apollo being out of range for such extended periods of time was due to the fact that the Soyuz had a very limited orbital inclination onto which it could be launched. That inclination was set up to allow the spacecraft to fly over and land on Soviet territory. Meanwhile, U.S. spaceflights had been planned from their earliest days to fly down the Eastern Test Range and orbit much more near the Earth’s equator. Thus, the U.S. tracking stations were established along that route, which was far south of most Soviet orbits. The tracking range had been supplemented over the years with communications-equipped ships and aircraft, yet there were still gaps. When a more northerly inclination was taken for ASTP, there were large gaps in communication and tracking.

Stafford, Brand and Slayton spent the next day working to collapse their docking probe so it could be properly stowed and doing an SPS burn to adjust their orbit. Likewise, Leonov and Kubasov did an 18-second burn on the Soyuz in order to circularize their orbit. 

In addition to their burn the cosmonauts managed to repair their broken TV camera aboard Soyuz. Using band-aid type adhesive strips from their medical kit they reportedly spliced some broken wires and got the camera working again. 

Meanwhile, I spent the day with a spray can of window cleaner getting to know every window in the Civic Center and thinking about those five men orbiting the Earth. When your work is dull, the mind has to go someplace- in my case it was Earth orbit.

Apollo- Soyuz, as I lived it a half century ago Pt2

 

3,000 CHAIRS

It was mid-July 1975 and gone were the days when I could set aside paying attention to school, or anything else, and solely focus on a spaceflight. Now I had to “work.” Somehow, work still never ranked up there as high as spaceflight with me. There seemed to be this philosophical line between pushing a broom in an arena and the peaceful advancement of human civilization.

Before leaving for work on launch day of Apollo/Soyuz, I asked my mom to go down to the basement TV, where I had the TV tuned to NBC, and simply push the “record” button and then allow the tape to run out. I would handle the rest when I got home. Of course, I went so far as to have her actually practice pushing the button. Although she seemed a bit doubtful about the task, I assured her by saying that with any luck she would not screw it up. Hey, you can have an ideal kid, or you can have a space-buff, but you cannot have both.

I had spent the day before launch day at the Civic Center putting 3,000 chairs down onto the floor of Wendler Arena for a country and western concert. Getting up early the following morning I had just enough time to watch some of the Soyuz pre-launch coverage and then had to go back to the Civic Center and pick up 3,000 chairs.

The rest of America’s space-buffs saw the difference between a Soviet launch and a NASA launch. The space news commentators were picking out odds and ends, and in many cases guessing at what would happen next. Yet I was left in the arena with 3,000 chairs to manage.

The Soyuz’s booster was, at its foundation, essentially was the same R-7 booster that had sent Sputnik and later Gagarin into orbit. Now it was topped with uprated stages that would loft the Soyuz. Sealed into a nose fairing that was topped with an escape tower, the spacecraft itself could not be seen.

NBC’s John Dancy was reporting live from Moscow that the Soviet public was “very excited” about seeing live television of a space launch, as well as live TV of the Soviet launch control center. It was estimated that some 100 million Soviet citizens watched the launch live on TV. One feature that did not materialize was live video from inside the Soyuz. The Soviets normally had a video downlink from inside the spacecraft, but moments before launch the Soyuz camera failed.

         Aboard Soyuz 19 were two cosmonauts: Commander Alexei Leonov and flight engineer Valery Kubasov. Leonov was already a spaceflight legend having been the first man to ever walk in space. If the Soviets had been able to send the first man to the Moon, that would probably have been Leonov, although some historians might take exception to the notion. Kubasov was a civilian engineer who had become a cosmonaut in 1963 and flew on Soyuz 6 as a flight engineer. Both he and Leonov had been previously assigned to the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission to the Salyut 1 space station in 1971, but were replaced by their backups, as was Pyotr Kolodin, when Kubasov suffered a lung ailment. It was the Soyuz 11 spacecraft that accidentally depressurized during reentry killing the three crewmen aboard (Gyorgy Dobrovolsky, Vladimir Volkov and Viktor Patsayev).

Soyuz was launched in a slightly smeared TV presentation as a translator gave the English version of the Russian calls.

“Ignition!” the translator stammered, “the engines are powered up. The launch! The booster is off! The flight is proceeding normally. The program maneuver of the booster rocket has been given… 20 minutes into flight.”

Apparently the difference between minutes and seconds was lost in the translation.

“The flight is normal,” the translator continued, “the engine is operating in a stable manner… there’s a slight movement of the booster, oscillation.”

A part of the awkwardness of the translation was the fact that the translator was projecting the words of both launch control and Leonov at the same time. No doubt our launch communications sounded just as awkward to the Soviets. Also, if the Soviet translator said anything wrong while narrating the mission the next stop could be the salt mines in Siberia. Soyuz 19 was inserted into orbit as planned and the next move was up to the United States.

Of course, I missed the entire Soyuz launch because the fate of the free world hung on those 3,000 chairs that now had to be picked up. I rarely complained about work because the pay was fairly good and I always kept in mind what my Advanced Electronics teacher used to tell us when we complained about an assignment: “There are guys in the salt mines who have put in eight hours already.” We did have the local FM Rock radio station, WHNN, on the arena speakers, but they did not break the music for news very often. I skipped my lunch hour in order to leave work early so I could get home and watch the Apollo launch.

Arriving home I found that Mom had accomplished her task exactly as instructed. Just moments before the launch broadcast began I dashed upstairs to the kitchen to make an iced tea and on the way past I congratulated Mom on having done a good job.

“Well, I’m not a complete idiot,” she sneered in reply.

Heading back down to the basement I told her that such a conclusion was still in question.

CBS was my choice for watching the final Apollo launch. The Space Shuttle that NASA was talking about seemed to still be pie-in-the-sky even if they did tell us it was only four years away. As far as I was concerned, considering the political attitude toward spaceflight over the past few years, this ASTP launch might just turn out to be the last American manned space launch, ever. Thus, I was going to watch Cronkite and Schirra and I was going to enjoy every second of the launch. Perhaps the only thing better would have been to be at the Cape myself to see it go.

The reality for me, however, and for millions of other space-buffs across the United States was that my chances of being there in Florida were about as remote as my actually being aboard the Apollo spacecraft itself. There was simply no way. Oddly, about a month earlier, some pals of mine from the Civil Air Patrol had come up with a plan to drive down from Michigan for the launch. Unfortunately, that plan dissolved nearly as quickly as it had been cooked up. For me the launch would be experienced, as always, in front of our TV set.

At KSC the weather was simply outstanding for a Saturn launch. Coverage of the launch picked up at 3:30 Michigan time that afternoon, and compared to the coverage given to the previous Skylab launches, ASTP’s coverage would look like a marathon. The networks had brought in almost anyone that they could find who had flown an Apollo to either give comments or simply sit and look interested. NBC brought in Alan Shepard to co-host their coverage with Jim Hartz and John Chancellor. Frankly, Shepard was never comfortable being around the news media and it showed. I stuck with CBS.

Hyperbole over the ASTP mission had grown to such a point that NASA went as far as to have a full-scale mock-up of the Apollo CSM, the DM and the Soyuz constructed. Then they stuck it in the transfer aisle of the VAB. This allowed the astronauts, cosmonauts, politicians and news media, both US and foreign to pose in front of it in the seven months leading up to the mission. Apparently there was some petty cash left over in the Apollo budget.

Just like the previous Saturn IB that had boosted Skylab 4, cracks were found in the fins of SA-210 which was scheduled to boost ASTP. Those fins were changed-out in the same manner as they had been on the previous vehicle. However, there was one huge exception to this operation; there was no media drama surrounding the operation. In fact, the change-out was hardly mentioned at all. Gone was the scandal craze, because Watergate and Nixon were now both old news. Now political détente was the atmosphere of the day and the point that the producers of network news wanted to be pushed. The operation of changing-out the fins took place in the VAB and almost no one noticed.

Ignition of the eight H-1 engines of AS-210 was on time and the hold-downs released just 0.5 seconds later than planned. As the Saturn IB climbed into a nearly cloudless sky, the NASA cameras were feeding tracking views as well as an internal shots of the astronauts.

CBS’s technical folks presented both views at the same time as a diagonal split-screen for the first few minutes of the boost. Once the launch vehicle was too high to see much detail, they switched to just the inside view of the crew. The view was simply amazing. Space-buffs could see Brand, nearest to the camera, and Stafford, in the background; Slayton was not in the view. We watched, for the first time, as our astronauts threw switches and ran checklists and headed into space. Cronkite commented that he sort of expected the crew to be pinned to their seats. But Schirra, who had commanded the first Apollo atop a Saturn IB, said that the acceleration was so gradual and the training was so good that the astronauts were actually quite comfortable. Additionally, once staging took place the ride on the S-IVB stage was little more than 1g. From my point of view, however, this live shot inside the Apollo CM was fascinating. The Soviets had often used a TV camera inside the Soyuz, although its images were never seen live by the public. In a strange twist of fate, we put a camera in our Apollo because they had a camera in their Soyuz, then their camera system failed.

As of this writing we space-buffs have never again been allowed to watch an ascent live as shown from a camera inside a U.S. manned spacecraft. The Russians, however, now routinely televise their launches live, including a live camera inside the Soyuz. Since American astronauts are currently forced to rent seats aboard the Soyuz in order to get to the International Space Station, the Russians now provide the TV that NASA never again provided.

Once the Apollo was inserted into orbit, the networks remained on and spent a little time discussing the fact that this was the end. It was the last Apollo and the last Saturn ever to fly. A sad and empty feeling came over me, not just as a space-buff, but as an American. I loathed the direction in which we were heading— like sheep being led by a myopic pop-culture that supported the myth that manned spaceflight was made up of all cost and no benefit. Worse yet was the prospect of having no more launches to watch and record, plus just one remaining splashdown. All I had left was hockey; of course the doctor said that I would probably be okay if I did not have a third concussion, so at least my winters would be full. Many years later a TV documentary implied that it was ASTP that doomed Skylab. They stated that now "...there are no more rockets and no more Apollo spacecraft..." That was completely untrue. At the time of ASTP there was another flight-ready Saturn IB, AS-209 (which today is on display at the KSC visitor's center), and more than one Apollo CSM, all of which could have been used to return to Skylab. 

The fact, however was that there was no more funding allocated by congress and the Office of Management and Budget for the use of those vehicles. Engineers reach for the stars- politicians, only reach for your pockets.

Watch for Part 3

    

Apollo- Soyuz, as I lived it a half century ago Pt1

 

ASTP

After nearly a year and a half of not having any Americans in space we space buffs were actually looking forward to this thing called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). 

Launched on July 15, 1975 ASTP did not have its roots in science, discovery or exploration. ASTP was, in fact, little more than a political exhibition conducted in space. Amid the atmosphere of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972, better known as SALT-1, the Nixon administration cooked up the prospect to have an American Apollo vehicle rendezvous and dock with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. It would use up one of the final remaining Apollo spacecraft, one of the final flight-ready Saturn IB boosters, and all of the remaining Apollo budget. For Nixon, ASTP also would satisfy his desire to best his historical political rivals. Too bad for him that he was compelled to resign from the presidency in disgrace before ASTP was stacked in the VAB. 

From the perspective of a space buff Nixon’s legacy in spaceflight was that AS-210, the ASTP Saturn IB, was launched on a Tuesday and on the following Friday 1,200 contractor workers at KSC were issued their pink slips. Sadly, it was only the beginning of an aerospace industry-wide recession. 

To most enthusiasts of NASA and the U.S. space program, ASTP meant little more than being able to witness an Apollo spacecraft fly again for the first time in more than a year. 

Without question the most exciting aspect of ASTP was the fact that the crew would contain one of the original seven astronauts, none other than Deke Slayton. Anyone who knew anything about NASA knew Deke’s story. He originally had been selected as the fourth of the seven original astronauts to fly, with his mission being one that would mirror John Glenn’s three orbits. He had named his capsule “Delta 7,” but as launch day drew near a single doctor looked at a minor heart fibrillation and decided to make it into a major issue. Slayton was grounded and ended up being the guy who selected new-hire astronauts and formed crews for missions. Then, some nine years after he had been grounded, Slayton began taking a regiment of vitamins to combat a cold and soon it dawned on him that his heart had not fluttered in months. After being examined extensively at the Mayo Clinic he was cleared for flight, and shortly thereafter he was cleared for spaceflight. The only problem was that all the remaining space missions were already assigned crews. Fortunately, along came one additional mission, which was ASTP. Slayton recommended himself for that mission. There was no one in NASA or in the spaceflight community who could have argued with that selection. Slayton’s only remaining problem was that he would have to learn to speak basic Russian.

 All of the crews involved in the flight were required to learn to speak the language of the other nation. During the mission, the Americans would speak Russian to the Soviet crew and the Soviets would speak English to the American crew. 

Although there was very little technical advancement involved in ASTP, the political fluff was enough to draw the continued attention of the news networks. These same networks, who collectively ignored the splashdown of the Skylab 4 crew after their world record stay in space, now went all out to cover ASTP.

 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of ASTP for us space buffs was the fact that for the first time we would get a good look at the Soviet’s mysterious Soyuz spacecraft. For over a decade the details of Soyuz had been shrouded behind Iron Curtain secrecy. 

Now, in order for ASTP to actually happen, the ever-paranoid Soviets had to lift the covers. Additionally, the US demanded that our crews and NASA officials must be allowed to tour the top-secret Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan. Also, NASA insisted that US astronauts be allowed to examine the operational hardware such as the Soyuz spacecraft that would fly on the mission and the booster that would place it into orbit.

Although there was very little of ASTP for someone like me to get excited about, it did inspire Ravell to produce a 1:96 scale model kit for the event. The kit was based on their Apollo lunar landing kit of the same scale and it used the same CSM. New was the “International Docking Module” and a detailed 1:96 version of their long shrouded in secrecy Soyuz. I bought one of the kits in hope that it would annoy the Soviets.

 

WATCH FOR PART 2

RETURN TO THE MOON

 

    Each year when the Christmas holidays roll around I take the time to watch the CBS News coverage of Apollo 8. 

It still fascinates me... the absolute daring of NASA to conduct that mission. At the time I was 11 years old, and on Christmas Eve my parents had friends and family over to our house for a party. Of course it was 1968 and most adults and far to many kids who were my age were smokers. Thus, our tiny home soon filled with a blue haze of carcinogenic second-hand smoke. Being a scrawny asthmatic, I retired to my parent's bedroom, shut the door and used pillows to to stop up the crack below the door. Then I turned on the TV. The station that came in best over the rabbit ears was WKNX, channel 25 UHF. This was because they broadcast less than a mile from our house. I found Cronkite in a marathon of reporting about the greatest peaceful event in human history. There I sat in the glow of the black and white TV set and I felt as far away from the "party" as a kid could get. The communications were sparse and often I had no idea what the crew was talking about.

When the live TV of the lunar surface, close-up, came on it was captivating. They were there! Really, really there, going around the Moon! It was a Christmas Eve that shook the world. In the days following that event I  would peer through the tiny windows of my model command module and imagine what it must have been like to be in there and going around the Moon.

Just four Christmas Eves later, it was all over. Apollo 17 had returned from a record-breaking lunar exploration and Richard Nixon had cancelled the three future Apollo missions to the Moon.

Now, in the end of 2024, some 52 years later, we are again positioning to do an up-graded Apollo 8 style lunar mission. Yes, there have been delays- the largest of which was caused by another spaceflight detesting president who myopically cancelled NASA's entire human deep spaceflight effort and then did his best to slow-roll congress' effort to put it all back on track. Additionally, there is no "space-race" with the Soviet Union. Thus there is no rush to get things moving. Yet, the on November 16, 2022, at 01:47:44 EST Artemis I was launched and sent the Orion spacecraft on an un-manned trip around the Moon. Although the schedule has slipped, the next Artemis booster is set to send a four astronaut crew back to orbit the Moon as a return for an Apollo 8 style mission.

This Apollo 8 type of mission will of course not shake the world. The second Artemis mission will fly in an era when spaceflight is really heating up. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9 missions on nearly a daily basis it seems. China and Russia are all launching crewed missions and a private U.S. company has not only launched crews into Earth orbit, but has also done the first private stand-up EVA aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. To top it all off SpaceX has also launched the world's largest booster and then power-recovered the first stage in a feat that was previously science fiction. Of course, none of these sent humans back to the Moon.

Now I can hear the SpaceX foamers babbling, "but... but... the Starship... blah, blah, blah..." Let's keep it in mind that the magnificent Starship, as amazing as it is, as of this writing- has yet to send as much as a stainless steel screw to the Moon. Thus, for now, our bets are all on Artemis.

Of course, this time we'll watch it in color... and there will be less people smoking.

SKYLAB 4 RETURN TO EARTH

THE FIRST SPLASHDOWN NOT COVERED ON TELEVISION SINCE IT HAD THE CAPABILITY TO DO SO

The following is an excerpt from my book "Growing up with Spaceflight- Skylab/ASTP" the text is protected by Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski and no portion of this may be republished in any manner.

Early on mission day 85, the crew of Skylab 4 closed the hatch on the Multiple Docking Adaptor for the final time and took their seats in the Apollo Command Module. It was February 8, 1974. Other than a capture latch snagging, the undocking went off without a hitch. The only real glitch was that the CM Reaction Control System’s (RCS) number two ring was showing a helium leak when it was pressurized. Mission Control, suspecting an impending fuel leak in the ring, decided not to use ring two and to simply reenter on ring number one. If the crew were to have a problem with ring one, Mission Control directed them to set the CM into a rolling reentry and proceed. CBS radio’s spaceflight announcer Reid Collins, while describing the pending reentry, stated that the crew of Skylab 4 would be coming in “on one ring and a prayer.”

Since I had taken the day off from school to watch this historic event on TV I had a whole 60 minute cassette tape ready to fill. I knew full well that it would be a year and a half before the next manned American spaceflight, and so I was going to catch every word of the TV coverage. It struck me that when the subject came up on the morning news shows, there was no mention of when the networks would start their coverage. At the expected time I was set up and ready to go, but there was no coverage.

Those of us on the outside who were growing up with spaceflight were not the only ones who were screwed by the TV networks; the Skylab 4 astronaut’s families got the shaft as well. Since there was no prior notice that the three TV networks were not going to cover the splashdown, the families of the crew had invited guests into their homes to watch the event on TV and celebrate. Instead of a joyful family moment that would be long remembered, they were treated to a great disappointment far beyond what those of us in the space-buff ranks had experienced. Later that evening Walter Cronkite, while talking about the Skylab 4 crew’s return, made it a point to highlight this historic slight on his CBS evening news broadcast.

“Their landing today,” Cronkite announced, “the first not covered live on television since it had the capability to do so.”

In the book, “Around the World in 84 Days,” Jerry Carr recalls that his son, Jeff, was so upset by the fact that all of the TV networks had elected to ignore the splashdown that he wrote letters to the presidents of NBC, CBS and ABC asking why they had done so. Surprisingly, he received replies from all three, and essentially they all said the same thing. The splashdown, although a historic event, was, in their opinion, not newsworthy. The mission was greatly overshadowed by an independent trucker’s strike, legal fights over Nixon’s White House tapes and gasoline shortages across the nation.

From the very beginning, the Skylab program had been given the brush-off by the snobs running the three TV networks. Thus, the snub of this historic moment should have been no surprise as it took a back seat to soap operas and game shows.