How would the rocket crew feel while the rocket was accelerating? They would lie barely conscious on their contoured G-couches ... The men would be expected to rise from their beds of pain (not knowing which end is up) and perform navigation feats that would tax a professor of celestial mechanics.

--TIME, Dec. 8,1952

Some anxieties have been dissipated since TIME'S first cover story on space exploration, but the "navigation feat" involved in the Apollo-Soyuz orbital linkup involves a new challenge. As Timothy James, who edited our cover story, puts it: "Apollo-Soyuz is an example of former enemies cooperating to achieve something that could benefit both sides." Indeed, the spectacle of Soviet and American space scientists working in tandem would have astonished our 1952 cover writer who reported that "the cold war has thrown a blackout over all rocket research. Not one man on earth who knows the latest developments can talk freely about them." Correspondents covering Apollo-Soyuz found the Soviets still obsessed by secrecy, but they did divulge more information than on any previous launching. In Moscow, TIME'S Gordon Joseloff assessed detente propaganda surrounding the mission, and provided biographies of the Soyuz cosmonauts. Atlanta Correspondent David Lee reported on the scene and personalities at NASA's mission control center in Houston. Aerospace Correspondent Jerry Hannifin furnished the "specs" of U.S. and Soviet space hardware. Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro verified details ranging from what the American astronauts will have for dessert (rehydratable peach ambrosia) to the mechanics of the "androgynous" docking module that will link the Soviet and American vehicles.

For Associate Editor Frederic Golden, the story caps years of reporting preparations for the mission, beginning with a tour of Soviet scientific institutions. Golden joined our Science section in 1969, the week that Apollo

11 astronauts returned to earth, and has since written dozens of space stories on subjects as diverse as Skylab, extraterrestrial intelligence and proposals to colonize the moon. "Space exploration," Golden says, "shows human beings in their finest moments--adventuring, dreaming and looking to the future." As we went to press three days before the Russian and American lift-offs, all hands here hoped that the mission would take place on schedule--and safely.

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