Word: linkup
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Welcomed by vodka toasts to U.S.Soviet friendship, American astronauts arrived in Russia last week to begin the final round of joint training exercises for next July's historic linkup of a U.S. Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. Both the American and Russian crews were confident that the flight would be successful; they all signed the jug of vodka, recorked it and promised to polish it off when they got back from orbit...
Even as the U.S. and the Soviet Union step up preparations for July's orbital linkup of an Apollo and a Soyuz spacecraft, many American officials have quietly been expressing their concern that Russian space skills may not be equal to the demands of that historic mission. Last week those doubts were dramatically reinforced. Only minutes after its launch, a Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts on board made a forced landing some 1,000 miles downrange in the rugged 13,000-ft.-high Altai Mountains of western Siberia...
...Soyuz 16 landed safely on the snow-covered steppes of Kazakhstan last week after six days in orbit, Soviet space officials were exultant. The successful flight, they said, showed that their cosmonauts and spacecraft were capable of carrying out their assigned role in next July's historic orbital linkup of an American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz...
...Russian manned space program underwent a radical overhaul after three cosmonauts were killed when a hatch seal failed in a 1971 flight. Even that redesign did not eliminate all the bugs. At the time of its previous test in August, Soyuz 15's thrusters failed during an attempted linkup with an unmanned Salyut space station...
...around the earth, Cosmonauts Anatoli Filipchenko, 46, and Nikolai Rukavishnikov, 42, practiced exercises with a docking ring mounted on the ship's nose. With the ring, according to the Soviets, the crew could simulate some of the "docking maneuvers" that will be required in next year's linkup. (The description was somewhat misleading since the Russian ship will be the passive partner during the rendezvous; Apollo will do all the critical maneuvering.) The Russian spacemen also reduced cabin pressure to about 10 Ibs. per sq. in., or roughly midway between Apollo's 5 p.s.i...