Apollo-Soyuz: A Dangerous Finale
Drifting lazily to earth under its canopy of three red and white parachutes, the Apollo spacecraft hit the gentle Pacific swells northwest of Hawaii just 4 1/2 miles off the bow of the recovery carrier New Orleans. The only visible problem aboard the craft as it returned from its historic space rendezvous with a Soviet Soyuz was minor. Some of the parachute shrouds caught on the Apollo's nose and capsized it; that left Astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Donald ("Deke") Slayton hanging face down from the straps holding them in their contour-fitted couches for several minutes until flotation balloons could right the capsule. But when they finally climbed out of the Apollo 45 minutes later, after it had been hoisted aboard the New Orleans, the astronauts appeared no more wan and weary than might be expected after a nine-day mission. They went through the traditional welcoming ceremonies, addressed the world from the carrier deck and took the obligatory call from the President.
Cancelled Dinner. That, however, was the end of the post-landing celebrations. All further activities were cancelled, including a steak and lobster dinner, and NASA doctors began treating the three men for a potentially serious lung problem. Unknown to the watching world, the glowing hot Apollo had begun filling with what the astronauts described as a "brownish-yellow gas" as it plunged through the 24,000-ft. level. Scarcely able to breathe, the spacemen choked through the harrowing four-minute descent. After the splashdown, they struggled for another five minutes, while suspended upside down in the capsized craft, to get at oxygen masks, stowed in a hard-to-reach spot behind their couches. Brand, whose mask fit poorly, passed out; he revived a minute or so later when Slayton and Stafford clapped the mask tightly over his face.
As Navy frogmen swam toward the capsized spacecraft, Stafford yelled into his microphone, "Get this --ing hatch open as soon as possible." After a moment, he cracked the hatch open himself. Most of his words were lost in the poor radio communication between the ship and Mission Control, apparently because a microphone had been left open during the hurried efforts to revive Brand. By now aware of a problem, a frogman clambered onto the edge of the ship, peered into a window and gave a thumbs-up sign to reassure everyone that the astronauts were all right. It was not until seven hours later that NASA officials in Houston began disclosing the full seriousness of the incident.
The gas apparently was highly corrosive nitrogen tetraoxide (N2O4), used as an oxidizer (or combustion agent) in Apollo's small attitude-control thrusters. If it is inhaled, the gas may cause only slight pain and coughing at first; but later, as it works its way into the lung tissue, it can lead to burnlike damage called pulmonary edema, filling the lungs with fluid. During their night aboard the carrier, the astronauts experienced considerable discomfort from coughing and were given cortisone in order to reduce lung inflammation. Next day when the carrier docked at Pearl Harbor, the three were driven to Honolulu's Tripler Army Medical Center. Waving and smiling as they walked into the hospital, the astronauts asked officials to reassure their wives back in Houston. "Tell them we're feeling pretty good," said Stafford.
At week's end doctors expressed cautious optimism about the chances for recovery, moved the men from the hospital's intensive-care unit to a private
VIP suite, and said that they probably would be flown home early this week.
The gas problem was the only real mishap in a nearly perfect double exercise. Leaving behind the orbiting Apollo after their 44-hour handclasp in the sky, Soyuz earlier in the week came to a near bull's-eye touchdown on a dusty Kazakhstan plain, ending what Soyuz Commander Aleksei Leonov in his colloquial English said was a flight that seemed to go "as smooth as a peeled egg." The Kremlin promptly hailed the joint mission with yet another barrage of pronouncements. Exulted Izvestia: SUCCESS IN OUTER SPACE FOR PEACE. The Russians had more reason to crow. At week's end the two cosmonauts who had been aloft in a Salyut space station all through the Apollo-Soyuz mission returned safely to earth after 63 days in space, a Soviet record.
Skeptical World. Doing his bit for detente, NASA Administrator James Fletcher said that the U.S.-Soviet flight had "shown a sometimes skeptical world that perhaps there is a real chance for world unity." That theme is sure to be heard repeatedly later in August when the two Soyuz cosmonauts arrive in the U.S. for a tour. But no reruns of the Apollo-Soyuz space spectacular are possible until the 1980s, when American astronauts again take to orbit aboard the space shuttle, a new generation of reusable craft that launch from a pad and land on a runway.
In the warm afterglow of the first joint American-Soviet mission, NASA officials are already talking about inviting the Russians to take part in the shuttle program, possibly by using it to visit a future Soviet space station. But as last week's precarious Apollo landing served to re-emphasize, such facile space politics carries human as well as diplomatic risks in exposing men and their fragile machines to the still formidable hazards of unforgiving space.
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