USA gegen Sowjet Union | Folge 3: Apollo und Sojus: Rendezvous im Kalten Krieg | Slice Doku

Video from the channel Slice Doku about Apollo–Soyuz, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 51:26. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary, according to the description a 2015 French production dubbed into German, about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. It combines period footage with testimonies from astronauts, cosmonauts and engineers from both countries, and follows the mission from the political agreement to Apollo's splashdown.

The account begins with the meeting of Soviet and American soldiers at the Elbe in April 1945 and runs through the Cold War and the space race, from Sputnik to the Moon landing in 1969. With détente, Nixon traveled to Moscow in May 1972: the SALT I treaty was signed, along with a space cooperation agreement that called for a common docking system for a flight in 1975. The mission was presented at the Le Bourget Air Show in 1973.

The American crew was made up of Thomas Stafford, a veteran of Apollo 10; Vance Brand, on his first flight, and Deke Slayton, selected in 1958 for the Mercury program and grounded by a heart problem. The Soviet crew was commanded by Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space in March 1965, with Valeri Kubasov, who had flown on Soyuz 6. From the autumn of 1973 the teams worked in Moscow and Houston: they learned each other's language, resolved the technical incompatibilities and designed a docking system identical on both sides, all under the watch of the KGB and the CIA. The Americans managed to visit Baikonur on 28 April 1975.

Soyuz launched first, on 15 July 1975, in the first Soviet launch broadcast live; hours later Apollo followed from Cape Canaveral aboard a Saturn IB. After chasing Soyuz for 44 hours, Apollo docked on orbit 36, and the handshake between Leonov and Stafford was watched around the world. The spacecraft remained joined for two days, with mutual visits, experiments, an exchange of gifts and the first international press conference from space. During Apollo's reentry, a switch left in the wrong position let toxic gases into the cabin and Vance Brand lost consciousness. The mission ended with splashdown in the Pacific on 24 July 1975, and the crew then spent two weeks in the hospital. Those involved point to it as a precedent for the Shuttle-Mir program and the International Space Station.