I remember watching this as a kid. While I remembered the later Apollo Moon missions and Skylab, I really had good memories of this. I later worked on the Shuttle-Mir missions, and was part of the team that took the Mir docking module to the Russians on STS-74. That was the highlight of my career in the manned space program. Good Times.
Seeing this first step in international space cooperation is super cool. It always feels like a forgotten mission, despite its unique concept and achievements.
At that time in Japan, it was from midnight to early morning. As an elementary school student at the time, I was glued to the black-and-white TV and watched the two heroes shake hands and bless each other with bread and salt.
I was almost 12 when this mission took place, and remember it well. As a young patriot excited about the upcoming Bicentennial, I was so upset that we were about to cede our space technology to the Soviets. But my father reminded me that Apollo was already outdated tech, and that NASA was moving on to the reusable Shuttle. He was right. Deke Slayton was prophetic when he declared that the best part of this mission was the joint project management skills which developed, later used for the ISS. Too bad politics of the last few years have endangered what this mission began to build.
The game shows that were on for this flight were- ABC- Showoffs Let's Make A Deal The $10,000 Pyramid Rhyme and Reason You Don't Say NBC- Celebrity Sweepstakes Wheel of Fortune High Rollers The Magnificent Marble Machine Jackpot! The Hollywood Squares CBS- Spin-Off The Price is Right Gambit Match Game Tattletales Musical Chairs
It was heart warming to experience this as a kid... It gave me hope that we can get along and not annihilate each other with thermonuclear weapons.. Maybe it'll happen someday again? After Putin is canned'...
I was a teenager during this time and had to follow the story somewhat on the downlow. My Pop, a career Air Force NCO didn’t believe we should be associating with the Russians in any amiable way. So while he and I both were interested in the mission, I couldn’t take his ongoing commentary. While I understood the why of his distrust and strong dislike of anything Russian, I couldn’t stomach the constant negativity.
I recall the words of both Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz when talking about Apollo Soyuz in later years. They basically described it as a waste of time. Something to distract from Watergate, and purely political with no scientific purpose. The Saturn 1B used here could easily have kept Skylab going. Good film though and a good find! Always good to see Deke.
American participation in the Mir program wouldn't have happened without ASTP though. The docking mechanism developed back then in the 70s for use on ASTP became the template for the docking mechanism the Shuttle used to dock with Mir as well as the ISS (all spacecraft which are able to dock with the ISS today use this same docking mechanism).
@@Nghilifawe had been docking since 1966 with Gemini 8 and then more successfully with Gemini 10. We really didn’t need to test docking in space 9 years later when we had no more manned rockets available after this flight anyway, and not at the expense of Skylab. It would be 1981 until we got back to space. Shuttle and Mir docked for the first time 20 years after Apollo Soyuz in 1995 with STS-71 and would have happened had Apollo Soyuz occurred or not. Our point (and I forgot Jay Greene was pretty vocal about this too), is that wasting our last Saturn 1B and abandoning Skylab and a potential 180 or 365 day science mission for a handshake wasn’t the best use of our final Apollo rocket.
@@ohheyitskevincFrom a pure technical and science approach this is correct. But spaceflight and NASA always had to operate in a more complex, political surrounding to guarantee funding, which in this case the higher-ups understood quite well. It is also interesting to see how Glynn Lunney described the change of attitude towards "the other side", while personal relations increased, people got to know each other better. That was probably an important gain for future developments, to have people in NASA who were already able to break out of common cold war thinking...
Crazy that the US astronauts almost died on landing due to forgetting to deactivate the thruster system until after landing which caused fumes to be sucked into the spacecraft. Brand even lost consciousness shortly but they all put on their oxygen masks which saved them, though they were still hospitalized for several weeks.
I can imagine the steely-eyed missile men of the 50s and 60s looking at this charade and thinking, huh? we're going to orbit again and... docking? Oh, fantastic...
Indeed. It seems like the lack of purpose in the space program began once we got to the moon, and then maybe proved that we could do it again (and that we could handle disasters). But then.... what? Nothing we couldn't live without, I suspect...
![Humanity's First Space Encounter [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iUP9X52pjU8/mqdefault.jpg)
19:34 the contrast of the film to tv camera is unreal, really cool!
I remember watching this as a kid. While I remembered the later Apollo Moon missions and Skylab, I really had good memories of this. I later worked on the Shuttle-Mir missions, and was part of the team that took the Mir docking module to the Russians on STS-74. That was the highlight of my career in the manned space program. Good Times.
That must have been incredible!!
I was born in the Space Shuttle era but the early years of the space program have always fascinated me.
I still have a handmade Soviet ballpoint pen, shaped like a rocket, that commemorates this mission.
My favorite apollo mission! Thank you for posting this!
Seeing this first step in international space cooperation is super cool. It always feels like a forgotten mission, despite its unique concept and achievements.
RIP Tom Stafford
At that time in Japan, it was from midnight to early morning.
As an elementary school student at the time, I was glued to the black-and-white TV and watched the two heroes shake hands and bless each other with bread and salt.
I was almost 12 when this mission took place, and remember it well.
As a young patriot excited about the upcoming Bicentennial, I was so upset that we were about to cede our space technology to the Soviets. But my father reminded me that Apollo was already outdated tech, and that NASA was moving on to the reusable Shuttle. He was right.
Deke Slayton was prophetic when he declared that the best part of this mission was the joint project management skills which developed, later used for the ISS.
Too bad politics of the last few years have endangered what this mission began to build.
those cosmonauts space suits still look cool as they don’t appear dated . this was an incredible moment
Yea right.
They look really cool. I was noticing that. Ours look dated and still look dated.
The game shows that were on for this flight were-
ABC-
Showoffs
Let's Make A Deal
The $10,000 Pyramid
Rhyme and Reason
You Don't Say
NBC-
Celebrity Sweepstakes
Wheel of Fortune
High Rollers
The Magnificent Marble Machine
Jackpot!
The Hollywood Squares
CBS-
Spin-Off
The Price is Right
Gambit
Match Game
Tattletales
Musical Chairs
It's too bad that NASA couldn't launch The last Apollo Saturn 1B to save the Skylab space station
Exactly. Happy to see I’m not the only one here bringing this up.
The state of Alabama just took down a Saturn 1b they had at the rest area near Ardmore, Alabama and turned it into beer cans.
Always nice to see Deke fly :) Thanks for uploading
It was heart warming to experience this as a kid... It gave me hope that we can get along and not annihilate each other with thermonuclear weapons.. Maybe it'll happen someday again? After Putin is canned'...
It happens every day in the ISS
I was a teenager during this time and had to follow the story somewhat on the downlow. My Pop, a career Air Force NCO didn’t believe we should be associating with the Russians in any amiable way. So while he and I both were interested in the mission, I couldn’t take his ongoing commentary. While I understood the why of his distrust and strong dislike of anything Russian, I couldn’t stomach the constant negativity.
Recent history tends to support his view.
I recall the words of both Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz when talking about Apollo Soyuz in later years. They basically described it as a waste of time. Something to distract from Watergate, and purely political with no scientific purpose. The Saturn 1B used here could easily have kept Skylab going. Good film though and a good find! Always good to see Deke.
Not everything is about science. Sometimes you just gotta have a bit of fun
American participation in the Mir program wouldn't have happened without ASTP though. The docking mechanism developed back then in the 70s for use on ASTP became the template for the docking mechanism the Shuttle used to dock with Mir as well as the ISS (all spacecraft which are able to dock with the ISS today use this same docking mechanism).
@@Nghilifawe had been docking since 1966 with Gemini 8 and then more successfully with Gemini 10. We really didn’t need to test docking in space 9 years later when we had no more manned rockets available after this flight anyway, and not at the expense of Skylab. It would be 1981 until we got back to space. Shuttle and Mir docked for the first time 20 years after Apollo Soyuz in 1995 with STS-71 and would have happened had Apollo Soyuz occurred or not. Our point (and I forgot Jay Greene was pretty vocal about this too), is that wasting our last Saturn 1B and abandoning Skylab and a potential 180 or 365 day science mission for a handshake wasn’t the best use of our final Apollo rocket.
@@ohheyitskevincFrom a pure technical and science approach this is correct. But spaceflight and NASA always had to operate in a more complex, political surrounding to guarantee funding, which in this case the higher-ups understood quite well. It is also interesting to see how Glynn Lunney described the change of attitude towards "the other side", while personal relations increased, people got to know each other better. That was probably an important gain for future developments, to have people in NASA who were already able to break out of common cold war thinking...
Crazy that the US astronauts almost died on landing due to forgetting to deactivate the thruster system until after landing which caused fumes to be sucked into the spacecraft. Brand even lost consciousness shortly but they all put on their oxygen masks which saved them, though they were still hospitalized for several weeks.
O, My God!!!
I can imagine the steely-eyed missile men of the 50s and 60s looking at this charade and thinking, huh? we're going to orbit again and... docking? Oh, fantastic...
Indeed. It seems like the lack of purpose in the space program began once we got to the moon, and then maybe proved that we could do it again (and that we could handle disasters). But then.... what? Nothing we couldn't live without, I suspect...
THANK YOU FOR THE WONDERFUL DOCUMENTARY!