![]() ![]() Completing and modifying CSM-115 for its backup role would cost $25 million. They would undergo 500 hours of intensive language instruction during their training.įOD estimated that Rockwell International support for the 1977 ASTP flight would cost $49.6 million, while new experiments, nine new space suits, and "government-furnished equipment" would total $40 million. If new crewmembers were needed, FOD noted, then training them would require 20 months. FOD conceded, however, that this assumption was probably not realistic. CSM-115, which resided in storage in California, had been tapped originally for the cancelled Apollo 19 moon landing mission.įOD also assumed that the ASTP prime crew of Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton would serve as the backup crew for the 1977 ASTP mission, while the 1975 ASTP backup crew of Alan Bean, Ronald Evans, and Jack Lousma would become the 1977 ASTP prime crew. FOD suggested that, if a backup CSM were deemed necessary for the 1977 ASTP mission, then the incomplete CSM-115 spacecraft should get the job. CSM-119 had been configured as the five-seat Skylab rescue CSM work to modify it to serve as the 1975 ASTP backup spacecraft began as FOD conducted its study, soon after the third and final Skylab crew returned to Earth in February 1974. ![]() would again provide the Docking Module (DM) for linking the Apollo CSM with the Soyuz spacecraft. FOD assumed that Apollo CSM-119 would serve as the prime 1977 ASTP spacecraft and that the U.S. The brief in-house study focused on mission requirements for which NASA JSC had direct responsibility. piloted space missions between the 1975 ASTP mission and the first Space Shuttle flight.Ĭutaway illustration of ASTP Apollo Command Module (lower left), ASTP Docking Module (DM), ASTP Soyuz Orbital Module, and ASTP Soyuz Descent Module (upper right). The 1977 ASTP proposal aimed to fill the expected gap in U.S. Nevertheless, early in 1974 the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, examined whether a second ASTP mission might be feasible in 1977. space agency was "currently unwilling" to divert funds from Space Shuttle development. A year and a half later (September 1973), however, the aerospace trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology cited unnamed NASA officials when it reported that, while the Soviets had indicated interest in a 1977 second ASTP flight, the U.S. NASA and its contractors studied ways of expanding upon ASTP even before it was formally approved in April 1972, for example, McDonnell Douglas proposed a Skylab-Salyut international space laboratory (see "More Information," below). In May 1972, at the superpower summit meeting held in Moscow, President Richard Nixon and Premier Alexei Kosygin signed an agreement calling for an Apollo-Soyuz docking in July 1975. Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in operation at the time.Ī joint U.S./Soviet space mission served the political aims of both countries, however, so the concept of a near-term docking mission rapidly gained momentum. Space Station/Space Shuttle, not the U.S. The concept of a common docking system was first put forward in 1970 it was assumed at that time, however, that the docking system would be developed for future spacecraft, such as the U.S. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had its origins in talks aimed at developing a common U.S./Soviet docking system for space rescue. ![]()
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