Memories: Special Apollo & Soyuz Launches in 1975

This morning I saw an 'on this date' post noting it was fifty years ago today that a certain event took place: a forward-thinking upward motion of cold war détente. Too many years ago I was there in front of the Zenith colour television tube as the anticipation was building, and had been building for some time, for a special orbital rendezvous: the "Apollo-Soyuz Test Project" would fire into being with two rocket launches, one of each from the USA and the USSR.

Perhaps the single most exciting "blast off" for me on July 15, 1975, was that of Soyuz 19, the Soviet side of the project. The Soyuz launch vehicle and spacecraft were somewhat mysterious entities to those of us in the west — civilians in the west. Photographs had been released by the Soviets, some officially and others unofficially, so we knew what the machine looked like at launch — it looked super cool, that's what it looked — but there were no motion picture images and nothing substantial in the way of data and specifications.

(Like the Vostok and Voskhod rockets the Soyuz was an outgrowth of the brilliant R-7A Semyorka, itself an upgrade of the earlier R-7 Semyorka.)

This then space cadet looked forward to seeing the Saturn 1B rocket lift the Apollo space vehicle, but the big draw for me, and many others, no doubt, was witnessing the launch of the Soviet machine. As I sat all giddy, the Zenith danced its chromatic scales. There was an anticipatory tension, an almost drum roll, as we waited for the scheduled launch time. When the final countdown rolled, we scrutinized every piece of visual data — there was no audio of the launch. That great Soyuz Roar would not be heard by me for many more years.

The rocket lifted; it was beautiful.

The video clip above is very 'archival'. No doubt it's been dubbed-down a few times over the years. The original 2-inch 'Quad' tape it is not. That flicker/roll you see at the shot-cuts looks to be a 'time base correction' issue: it may be due to uncorrected duplication, one lacking a TBC (Time Base Corrector), or it may have been in the original live transmission, which is my guess as I've seen other sources displaying the same malady — it was a satellite feed, to boot.

Postscript: the mission's astronauts were Thomas P. Stafford, Vance D. Brand, and Deke Slayton; the cosmonauts, Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov.