The Partnership: A NASA History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Foreword
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.