Apollo–Soyuz

Yes.

So, I- one of the unfortunate things is there's been a lot of debate on how to do this effectively over the past, what, 50 some odd years since Apollo-Soyuz.

And, and so even on the International Space Station, there are two different sets-

Right

Mercury.

Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz test project, space shuttle program, shuttle mirror program, international space station, commercial crew program, Artemis program.

The Artemis program is the current program to bring humans to the moon again.

If you are hearing this way later, we already made it back we set foot on the moon everything went according to plan and we are looking at making a space station on the moon so we're gonna drop a couple humans deposit them on the surface of the moon and have them set up somewhat of a permanent habitat on the surface of the moon.

So, you know, I like where we are

Chris, the 2020s... 2020, 2030s version of the Apollo-Soyuz test mission is, is an Astra rocket and a Rocket Lab Haste, uh, being target practice for each other-

[laughs]

... and having to debate which one's the target and which one's the attacker.

Uh, he-

I, I think, I think, you know, Rocket Lab will have the Haste thing, and then, you know, we'll-

I'm just telling you, that's the commercial space version of the Apollo-Soyuz test program.

Uh-

The net result was that it gave the Saturn 1B just enough thrust and total impulse to loft around 21 metric tons, equivalent to a half-fueled Apollo CSM, or fully-fueled LEM, into orbit.

In addition to early Apollo test flights, the Saturn IB was also used to transport three Skylab space station crews in 1973, and the American contingent of the Apollo-Soyuz test project in 1975.

The first test flight of the Saturn IB was the AS-201, also originally known as the Apollo 1.

This was also the first flight of a complete Apollo CSM, though the mission used the older Block 1 version of the spacecraft.

This antenna was part of NASA's STDN, Space Tracking and Data Acquisition Network, and it had the primary job of tracking unmanned scientific satellites.

So it did participate in a number of famous crewed missions, a 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, and it also supported some of the early space shuttle missions in the early 80s.

But essentially, NASA rationalized its deep space network or spacecraft tracking in Australia to the Tidbinbilla site.

And this antenna at that time was identified as being surplus to their requirements.

The idea of a space plane, something that would be reusable and look like a ship as opposed to a capsule, had been talked about really for years, if not decades, before that.

And with the end of the Apollo program, with the end of the moon missions, and then the one last Apollo flight of the Apollo-Soyuz test flight, people were wondering what really would the next-looking spaceship be like for the United States and really for the world.

And it was the shuttle, which really captured the imagination of people around the world.

The Russians tried to build their own version of the shuttle.

Even at the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Russians, we were cooperating in space, working aboard the Russian space station.

The Apollo-Soyuz missions were significant.

And so that's what excites me about space.

It brings people together.