Man, I almost forgot about this!

Thirty years ago this month, the USA and CCCP conducted the Apollo-Союз Test Project, when Astronauts and Cosmonauts joined together to show the world that it ain’t all about blowing each other up and that together, Humanity can explore the universe.
This mission was partly inspired by the 1968 motion picture “Marooned,” about a stranded American Apollo mission and its rescue by a Soviet spacecraft. It was also the debut of the Hewlett-Packard HP-65 programmable calculator in space, as a backup for the Apollo main computer.
I even managed to find a picture taken ten years ago at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum…with an analog camera no less!
Here are the Heroes who pulled this mission off and pioneered the international cooperation which endures today aboard the International Space Station:

(L-R: Donald “Deke” Slayton, Thomas Stafford (American Commander), Vance Brand, Alexei Leonov (Soviet Commander), Valery Kubasov.)

An amazing feat…even thirty years later.

I was only 2 and half years old when this happened, and I can recall my old man watching it on TV to some effect… whether it was the lift off or the connection, that I can’t recall.

Classic: ” the debut of the Hewlett-Packard HP-65 programmable calculator in space, as a backup for the Apollo main computer”

Tell me Macker, given your choice, would you have gone up in the Apollo or Soyuz craft?

Interesting Question. Back then, definitely Apollo! But even though the Russians have improved the “Союз” (Soyuz is Russian for “Union”) spacecraft over the years, I’d still not feel too keen on going up in one because of all the budget constraints the Russian economy has.

Gimme Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo!