Apollo-Soyouz : Quand la Guerre Froide Fait Relâche dans l’Espace | SLICE HISTOIRE | DOC COMPLET

Video from the channel SLICE Histoire about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 54:13. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

French documentary about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint space mission between the United States and the Soviet Union. It reconstructs the years of preparation and the July 1975 flight with period footage and testimonies from astronauts, cosmonauts, technicians and specialists, focusing on the relationship between the two commanders, Thomas Stafford and Alexei Leonov.

The piece places the mission in the midst of the Cold War: the space race opened by Sputnik in 1957, Gagarin's flight in 1961, Tereshkova's in 1963, and the American arrival on the Moon in 1969. The détente of the early seventies, with Nixon's visit to Moscow on May 22, 1972 and the signing of SALT I, opens the door to a space cooperation agreement providing for a common docking system and an experimental flight for 1975. The stated technical goal is to be able to rescue crews from another country in orbit; the propaganda goal is to offer the world the image of a handshake in space.

The crews are introduced at the 1973 Le Bourget air show: Stafford, a veteran of Apollo 10, with Vance Brand and Deke Slayton; Leonov, who performed the first spacewalk in March 1965, with Valeri Kubasov. Each team learns the other's language and ends up speaking it, more slowly and clearly. The docking system, with three guide petals over a damping collar, follows a Soviet design that each country manufactures on its own. On April 28, 1975, the Americans visit Baikonur for the first time to see the actual spacecraft. On July 15, Soyuz lifts off first, broadcast live, followed by Apollo atop the last Saturn IB. After docking, the two spacecraft remain joined for two days, with mutual visits, experiments and a press conference from orbit. Soyuz lands on the steppes of Kazakhstan; Apollo splashed down in the Pacific on July 24 after a reentry in which toxic gases from the thrusters entered the cabin, Brand lost consciousness, and the three astronauts were hospitalized for two weeks. Leonov recalls that the handshake took place over the Elbe, where soldiers from both countries met in 1945.