Word: soyuz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some anxieties have been dissipated since TIME'S first cover story on space exploration, but the "navigation feat" involved in the Apollo-Soyuz orbital linkup involves a new challenge. As Timothy James, who edited our cover story, puts it: "Apollo-Soyuz is an example of former enemies cooperating to achieve something that could benefit both sides." Indeed, the spectacle of Soviet and American space scientists working in tandem would have astonished our 1952 cover writer who reported that "the cold war has thrown a blackout over all rocket research. Not one man on earth who knows the latest developments...
...Russia for the final round of joint training exercises for July's space linkup of an Apollo and a Soyuz spacecraft, U.S. Astronauts Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand visited a site never before seen by Americans: the secrecy-shrouded Soviet space-launch center, located in low, rolling hills some 1,300 miles southeast of Moscow near the city of Leninsk in Kazakhstan...
Last week in Moscow, the astronauts expressed confidence that the joint mission would take place. They noted that the Soviets had two Soyuz craft ready at the space center, one a stand-by that would be launched if the first had technical difficulties. The astronauts also discovered some basic differences between the U.S. and Soviet launch techniques. Unlike U.S. rockets, which are restrained on the ground until close to maximum thrust is developed, Russian launch vehicles leave the pad as soon as they have achieved the minimum thrust needed for liftoff. Also Soviet rockets are aimed to go into orbit...
...Soyuz simulators at Star City, the cosmonaut training site outside Moscow, Astronauts Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand joined Cosmonauts Aleksei Leonov and Valery Kubasov in practicing the maneuvering and docking of the two spacecraft. They crawled from one ship to another by passing through the "docking module" that links the spacecraft and acts as a decompression chamber (necessary because Soyuz and Apollo maintain different atmospheric pressures). The spacemen also rehearsed procedures they would follow in the event of such emergencies as a fire or loss of cabin pressure. At week's end the crews were preparing...
Russian Reassurances. As preparations for the mission continued, some American officials were still worried over the failure of the latest Soyuz flight (TIME, April 21). The Russians sought to reassure them. Referring to the Soyuz's emergency landing near the Chinese border, Major General Vladimir Shatalov, chief of cosmonaut training, said: "Of course, no one would have conducted such a test on purpose. But the flight did help confirm the Soyuz spaceship's full potentialities-in particular, the ability to save crewmen's lives in an extraordinary situation." That may indeed be true...