U.S., Soviet Spacemen of ’75 Together Again, Down to Earth

Fifteen years to the day after five men orbited the globe in a mechanical embrace in the only joint, manned space venture by the United States and the Soviet Union, four veterans of the historic encounter met in Los Angeles to celebrate the past and ponder the future.

All these years later, they are still preaching the same gospel of international cooperation that they have been pushing since an American Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz far above the Earth.

It was on July 17, 1975, when three astronauts and two cosmonauts joined their orbiting spacecraft together in a historic gesture as they sped around the Earth at more than 18,000 m.p.h. To Americans, it became known as the Apollo-Soyuz mission. To the people of the Soviet Union, it was the Soyuz-Apollo mission.

All that seemed far away Tuesday on the anniversary of that extraordinary encounter, as four men from two very different worlds played tourists and swapped stories of a time when they were younger and U.S.-Soviet relations were not so cordial. The spacemen will spend four days here, being toasted at luncheons and banquets. Tuesday, they held a press conference at the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Apollo-Soyuz mission “showed it is possible for people who have great differences to cooperate in space,” said Valery N. Kubasov, one of the two cosmonauts.

“I would like to think that Apollo-Soyuz set the stage for what is happening today,” added Donald K. (Deke) Slayton, one of the astronauts. “But we didn’t think it would take 15 years to get to this point.”

While here, the four spacemen will also be given a tour of Disneyland, a deal that even Nikita S. Khrushchev couldn’t swing in 1959 when U.S. officials turned down his request for security reasons.

Only one of the five members of the crew was left out of the anniversary celebration. U.S. astronaut Vance Brand had expected to participate, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration wouldn’t let him because he is waiting for the launch of the shuttle that he was supposed to have flown into space nearly two months ago.

The shuttle was grounded because of a leak in its fuel line, and is not expected to fly before August, at the earliest. Brand would have been the link between the past and the present, because he is the only one of the five who is still working as an astronaut.

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford, commander of the Apollo mission, and Slayton went on to other careers. Kubasov and Maj. Gen. Alexi Leonov became top executives in the Soviet space program. Kubasov is deputy director of the program that runs Inergia, the most powerful rocket in the world today. Leonov, who commanded the Soyuz, is now in charge of cosmonaut training in Moscow.

Leonov, incidentally, was the first human to walk in space, and he reflected on that adventure in an interview Tuesday. When he left his spacecraft in 1965, as it orbited the Earth, he said he could see nearly all of Europe stretching across the globe. Like others who were to follow him, the experience left him keenly aware of the fragility of Earth.

The preservation of the planet--saving it from both war and ecological disaster--is something that “must unite all people,” he said.

His countryman struck the same theme, as have many others who have journeyed into space.

“Those who flew out in space know how small the Earth is,” said Kubasov.

The Apollo-Soyuz mission has been derided by some critics who saw it as little more than an international publicity stunt of staggering proportions, but four of the men who took part in it made it clear Tuesday they believe it was much more.

“Soyuz-Apollo was visualized as a means of working out a mission to save astronauts that could be in trouble in space,” said Kubasov. The scope of the program was widened when it became clear that it would offer a dramatic example of the importance of international cooperation, he added.

“There have been two occasions when we worked together,” Stafford said of the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union: “World War II and the Apollo-Soyuz” mission.

Stafford said other opportunities for joint missions could be available in the future, including sending an American to the Soviet space station, Mir, and taking a cosmonaut on a shuttle mission.

“And way down the road,” he added, “returning to the moon and going on to Mars.”

A joint U.S.-Soviet mission to Mars ranks high on the agenda for many space enthusiasts, but none of the four expects to see anyone going to Mars soon.

Leonov told a group of preschoolers who had clustered around the press conference at the museum that the journey to Mars would belong to their generation, not his.

“The flight to Mars is possible around 2015,” he said. “But with one precondition, that people will not start killing each other.”

Waving his arm toward the children sitting on the floor, he said the candidates for that mission “are the age of these children.”

He then lifted up what appeared to be an ancient 16-millimeter camera and began taking pictures of the children. And then he turned it on the television cameras that were taking pictures of him.

He told the children to prepare themselves for space adventures that will be multinational, consisting of crews that will speak as many as half a dozen different languages. That will be even more of a challenge than the Apollo-Soyuz crew had to overcome.

In 1975, the Soviets spoke a little English and the Americans spoke a little Russian.

And they managed to communicate.

They were still doing that Tuesday, 15 years after sharing a few sane moments in a world that seemed to be going mad.