7/2/2023 0 Comments Race into space interplay![]() The idea that cooperation and competition are not mutually exclusive but rather closely interrelated was already described for the history of science in general (Nickelsen and Krämer 2016) as well as for specific contexts, for example, the history of polar science (Launius, Fleming and Devorkin 2010 Soutschek and Nickelsen 2019). I argue that the ASTP was as much a tool of competition as one of cooperation and the rationale behind its emergence was not a replacement of competition by cooperation but rather an interplay between cooperative and competitive logics. From the theoretical point of view, I use insights from Simmel’s sociological writings to retell the history of the ASTP and offer a more complex picture of interests and motivations than so far suggested. Based on archival sources from Moscow, I shed some light on factors that led to a change in the previous reluctance of Soviet actors to cooperate with the United States in manned spaceflight. In this article, I attempt to reconsider the evolution of the ASTP from both a conceptual and an empirical perspective. ![]() Sadeh (1996) emphasize the political symbolism of the project and view the ASTP as part of a wider political agenda that was enabled and defined by the détente in American-Soviet relations. On the other hand, Krasnyak ( 2018) and E. He argues that American and Soviet space officials started to consider cooperation as an adequate response to the challenges for their national space programs and pushed for it with little interference from politics (p. Karash ( 1999) identifies “the convergence of purely professional interests” as the main factor leading to the ASTP. In studies on the evolution of the ASTP, two explanations prevail: one stresses the professional motivation and engagement of space officials, and the other focuses on the political rationale behind space cooperation. In particular, the Soviet perspective remains obfuscated because of the difficult access to Russian archival sources. Instead of a further escalation of the space race, what followed in the next years was a no less spectacular rapprochement between the two rivals that led to the first cooperative endeavor in manned spaceflight and, in the end, a docking between an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft.Īlthough the accomplishment of this joint mission known as the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) received huge media coverage and attention worldwide at the time, its history has not yet been examined in detail and from different perspectives. However, after the mission, Western experts agreed that “Soviet officials, either by design or circumstance, did not create the ‘space spectacular’ widely forecast by many Russian and Western observers” (Gwertzman 1969: 14). The rumors about an imminent spectacular Soviet spaceflight seemed to be confirmed in October 1969 with the launch of three Soyuz ships. The Space Business Daily expected the Soviet manned lunar mission to be attempted in October (Soviets may attempt 1969, p. Back then, in July 1969, the space race culminated with the successful American lunar landing, and the global public was waiting for the Soviet response. ![]() On July 17, 1975, American astronaut Thomas Stafford and Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov exchanged their historic space handshake, an event that would have been hard to envisage only six years earlier. ![]() The decisive role in those changes was played by factors that can be subsumed under the notion of the so-called “third.”įor anyone who remembers the grim atmosphere of 1957–58, the Apollo Soyuz mission must seem a political as well as scientific miracle. To explain the turn towards cooperative practices, the article looks at the complex constellation of competitive relations that existed within the national and international context of space exploration and changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From the theoretical point of view, it argues that the ASTP was as much a tool of competition as one of cooperation and resulted from an interplay between cooperative and competitive logics. Based on archival sources from Moscow, it sheds some light on those factors that led to a change in the previous reluctance of Soviets to cooperate with the US in the manned spaceflight. ![]() The aim is to reconsider the rationales behind the ASTP from both a conceptual and an empirical perspective in order to get a better understanding of the evolution of international cooperation in the highly competitive and strategic field of space technology. The paper investigates the evolution of the first manned international space mission – a rendezvous and docking between a US and a Soviet spacecraft in 1975 known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). ![]()
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