ABSTRACT
The last use of an Apollo craft in space was during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in July 1975. The ASTP had been the proud last issue of the old adventurous idea that somehow the reach into space would lead the country to grasp new solutions to its persistent problems. The mission, a joint project of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, was simple. The location of the Soviet facility was a particular sticking point for knowledgeable members of the American space hierarchy and intelligence community. On the Soviet side, Alexei Leonov had been the first human ever to walk in space, during the flight of Voskhod 2 in 1965. For forty-seven hours the American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz circled the earth as a single entity. The practical accomplishments of the Apollo program, and of the agency that had imagined, designed, and implemented it, had been great in number and lasting in significance.
