See how it looked in 1975

Space handshake staged with care

By David F. Salisbury | Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Johnson Space Center, Houston

“Smile, Tom and Alexei, you’re on the air.”

When Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and American astronaut Thomas Stafford meet in space and exchange their historic handshake, the moment will be as well-staged as a scene in a television drama. Each minute of their joint activities has been carefully arranged.

Their meeting was planned as the world’s TV spectacular of the 1970s.

Judging by comments of the largest-ever array of the overseas newsmen here, interest in parts of Europe and in Japan now is as great, or even greater, as it was for the first moon landing in 1969.
More than 2000 newsmen watched the U.S. launch at Cape Canaveral. French and Japanese newsmen here report very high interest in the joint flight.

Although at times it has required delicate negotiations, both the United States and the Soviet Union have worked diligently to play to their international audience.

A full 10 hours, or one third, of the joint activities of the spacemen will be televised. Flight television coverage was to last for 35 hours.

The handshake between spaceship commanders Stafford and Leonov originally was to take place at the hatch opening of the narrow tunnel between the two spacecraft where television cameras only would have shown the backs of the two men. But now the historic moment has been delayed a few minutes and moved back into the docking module so the international television audience can see both men’s smiles.

According to Robert Shafer, NASA associate administrator for television, a number of events have been juggled around to ensure that major crew activities are televised.

This is “in keeping with the major mission objective to conduct a highly visible demonstration of international cooperation in space,” he says.

Some of the most difficult negotiations involved working out the details of the first joint press conference in space. It took six months to plan. The Soviets wanted to screen reporters’ questions and use their own television system to record the cosmonauts’ responses.

The Americans argued that newsmen should talk directly with the two crews and that U.S. television be used. Although the Americans prevailed on the press conference the Soviet portion of a space travelog will be held in the Soyuz.

In the 24 hours following the two launches Tuesday, only one problem developed which might have interfered with the meeting. But, on a second try Astronaut Vance Brand was able to remove a docking mechanism which had blocked the passageway between the Apollo capsule and the cylindrically shaped airlock which will connect it to the Soyuz capsule. The way to the historic handshake was clear.

“The thought that American and Soviet astronauts will be shaking hands in space over West Germany makes people in France very excited,” says Bernard Chabbert, aerospace reporter for French radio station Europe One. The French are even more interested in this mission than in the moon landings, he says.

One reason why there may be more European interest in space today than in 1969 is that the European community today is taking an active role in space activities.

With French leadership, Europe is developing a rocket to put large satellites into orbit. Also the European nations are designing a space laboratory to be carried aboard the American space shuttle.
According to Tetsuya Ozebi of Jiji Press is Tokyo, the Japanese find the Apollo-Soyus rendezvous as intriguing as the moon mission.

The reasons, he says, are because this mission is a visible sign that détente is working; because it may be the beginning of an era of international cooperation in space; and because it is just a very good show.