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“National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This film documents the Apollo / Soyuz mission, and stresses the spirit of cooperation and friendship that helped make the mission a success. It generally follows the mission’s timeline, with appropriate flashbacks to detail the period of development and training, and concludes with a glimpse into the future of international cooperation in space, featuring the space shuttle and the European project, Spacelab.”
Reupload of a previously uploaded film, in one piece instead of multiple parts, and with improved video & sound.
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
from “Apollo Soyuz”
For the American and the Soviet spacecraft to join together in orbit, several modifications had to be made to each. The new compatible docking system had to be accommodated, and a chamber had to be built through which the men could pass from the ‘ internal atmosphere of one spacecraft into the different atmosphere of the other.
This connecting link between the two craft—designed and built by the United States—was called the Docking Module. The module was basically a cylindrical aluminum corridor 3.15 meters (10 feet, 4 inches) long and 1.4 meters (4 feet, 8 inches) at its widest diameter weighing 2012 kilograms (4436 pounds). Inside or attached to it were containers for gases to replenish the atmosphere, radio and television and other communications equipment, and research apparatus including a small electric furnace.
The astronauts used the module also as a bedroom (Slayton slept in it several times to make more room for the other crew members in the Apollo Command Module), as a storeroom for equipment, as a den for friendly conversations durinf transfers with Soviet crew members, and, of course, as an airlock—a chamber in which the atmosphere is changed to that of the craft about to be entered. The two-gas atmosphere normally used in the Soyuz was about the same as the atmosphere on Earth at sea level—it consisted of a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen at a pressure of 1 kilogram per square centimeter (14.7 pounds per square inch).
The Apollo atmosphere was very different—it was made up of pure oxygen at a pressure of only 0.35 kilogram per square centimeter (5 pounds per square inch), which is only about one-third the pressure of the normal Earth atmosphere.
Such great pressure differences during the flight would have required crew members to spend about two hours in the Docking Module during each transfer from the Soyuz to become accustomed to the Apollo atmosphere. Otherwise the men would have risked serious illness similar to “bends” experienced by deep-sea divers after rising too rapidly from ocean depths.
To shorten the time for a safe transfer, the Soviets reduced the atmospheric pressure inside Soyuz to 0.7 kilogram per square centimeter (10 pounds per square inch) and kept it at that lower level while docked. In this way, transfers were made without danger to the men and transfer operations in the Docking Module required only a few minutes.
The Apollo (without the Docking Module) was 12.6 meters (42 feet) long, 3.9 meters (13 feet) at its widest diameter, and weighed 12 731 kilograms (28 054 pounds).
The Soyuz was 7.5 meters (25 feet) long, had a diameter of 2.72 meters (9 feet) at its widest circumference, and weighed 6800 kilograms (14 991 pounds) .
Apollo, Soyuz, Apollo-Soyuz, ASTP, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA, Russia, astronaut, cosmonaut, rendezvous and docking, docking module, Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton, Vance Brand, Alexei Leonov, Valeri Kubasov
