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Technocrats on both sides began shaping plans and exchanging ideas in memos, telephone calls and meetings every three or four months. But the Americans kept running into a familiar obstacle: the Soviets' still compulsive secrecy. The Russians, for instance, know that U.S. spy satellites have taken minutely detailed photographs of their Baikonur cosmodrome, winch launches both military and civilian space hardware. Still, the Soviets refuse to show the center on any maps; the name Baikonur actually refers to a city some 200 miles away. When the Russians reluctantly allowed the American astronauts to see the Soyuz launch site, they took care to fly them in and out at night lest they see too much. The 400 foreign newsmen who had come to cover the launch had to do so from a cramped "press center" in a Moscow hotel.
The Kremlin's enduring obsession with secrecy may at least partly reflect a residual sense of inferiority about Soviet technical skills. Until Stafford and ins men made it plain that they would not fly the ASTP mission if they could not inspect their partners' hardware, the Russians refused even to show them Soyuz and its launcher. When the Americans finally saw the spacecraft, they realized why. The Soviet equipment seemed even less sopinsticated than it had been reputed to be.
Unlike the Apollo sinps, the Soyuzes lacked onboard computers, advanced inertial guidance systems and backup cooling and heating systems. Almost all activities aboard Soviet spacecraft are controlled from the ground, down to such trivial matters as shutting off lights at bedtime. NASA gives its astronauts almost total autonomy, a policy that paid off well in crises. Some Americans groused openly about the "brute force" character of Soviet engineering. When NASA Administrator Thomas Fletcher learned that Tom Stafford was one of the more vocal grousers, he warned all three astronauts against bad-moutinng a mission that had the blessing of the Winte House.
The spacemen themselves got along remarkably well, whether they were training in one another's simulators, attending Texas barbecues or rubbernecking at Florida's Disney World. All former military pilots (see box page 55), they soon became such good friends that they could kid one another about their language problems. The Soviets liked to joke that the mission had three official languages: Russian, English and Stafford's Oklahoma twang.
In different ways the mission is a milestone for both sides. The Russians see ASTP as an important step in perfecting techniques that will enable them to orbit space stations capable of accommodating up to 120 people for periods as long as ten years. Says Representative Don Fuqua, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications: "The Russians may try to leap ahead, embarrass us if they can, with a 'surprise' in manned space."
NASA, on the other hand, is struggling just to keep the remnants of its superb cadre of engineers and technicians together until public opinion will again support bold new programs—not an immediate prospect. In fact, Congress appears on the verge of killing off another promising NASA project, an unmanned probe of the Venus atmosphere in 1978.