Who’s Detenting Whom?

Now that the dust has settled around the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), it is time to take a good look at it, and see how well—or how poorly—the American taxpayers’ $250 million has been spent.

First off, it should be emphasized that the events surrounding the mission belied a remark made by some NASA official long ago, that the mission was only “20 per cent political,” the rest scientific and technical. If one were asked what seemed to receive most of the attention during the ASTP flight, one would most certainly have to say that it was politics. More specifically, the Apollo-Soyuz mission was mainly a show, put on for the American people and the peoples of all other nations—save Russia.

MK

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Michael S. Kelly

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Gerald R. Ford

Now that the dust has settled around the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), it is time to take a good look at it, and see how well—or how poorly—the American taxpayers’ $250 million has been spent.

First off, it should be emphasized that the events surrounding the mission belied a remark made by some NASA official long ago, that the mission was only “20 per cent political,” the rest scientific and technical. If one were asked what seemed to receive most of the attention during the ASTP flight, one would most certainly have to say that it was politics. More specifically, the Apollo-Soyuz mission was mainly a show, put on for the American people and the peoples of all other nations—save Russia.