Apollo-Soyuz: The Joint Hoax?
Chapter 4
1974 broadcast: "Rendezvous in Orbit in 1975" – Get Ready!
"What kind of falsification could there be? I saw everything with my own eyes on TV. Everything was clear to see! And there was movement in zero-g."
– Reader's letter
A. Kudryavets sent this interesting letter to the author:
"In September 1974 representatives of NASA and Interkosmos signed an agreement on information policy for the joint US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission.1 Quite a strange event! Do we need to consider that the true meaning of this agreement was to hide some aspects from the public?"
It is indeed strange. It is normal to allow the media of each country to give their own accounts of a flight in accordance with the interests of their audiences and the traditions of their journalists. But it's quite another matter if an agency does something, but then shows and reports the event entirely differently. In which case they do need to agree on concerted actions and accounts.
We will study in detail what leaked through the filters of this agreement.
From Soviet (Russian) sources in particular, the official Soviet book Soyuz and Apollo,2 published by the main publishing house of the Communist party of the country Politizdat, will be used as well as the jubilee edition of Soyuz-Apollo published by RSC Energia.3
Accounts on the 'meeting in orbit' were orchestrated by the USA
The vast majority of the illustrative materials on the ASTP flight originally published and available on the Internet today are presented either directly by NASA, or reproduced from various US sources. This suggests that it was the Americans who undertook the groundwork of the preparation of accounts of the rendezvous and 'handshake in orbit' between the US and Soviet crews.
In June 1974 a group of American specialists visited the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. On the mock-up of the Soyuz spacecraft, numerous photographic and video recordings of flight scenes were taken that were simulated by operators with all possible combinations of lighting at various angles. The flight dynamics of the crews, the "floating" of connecting cables and equipment in weightlessness were also taken into account. All planned options for in-flight filming were rehearsed... Similar work was carried out by Soviet specialists on the Apollo mock-up in Houston at the end of 1974.4
See also ASTP TV coverage video live from Soyuz (at 25 mins) and Apollo-Soyuz Handshake (CBS).
The planned poor quality of NASA’s TV transmissions
Some elements of emphasis in the preparation of planned coverage caused misunderstandings among the Soviet specialists:5
But with the limited allocation of time for the television coverage, filming and photography we faced seemingly unsolvable problems. Our American colleagues said that they were interested primarily in generating TV programs, and offered to allocate the majority of the time for them. A special television group was formed at the Space Center in Houston for this purpose. It was tasked with dealing with on-board television programs.
It must be noted that if more time is allocated for television coverage (which requires different lighting to filming and still photography), then the time for film and photographic shooting inevitably decreases. And our experience has confirmed the importance of capturing both film and photographic materials along with television reports.
Filming provides high quality images in combination with dynamism of a picture. This provides many opportunities for analyzing the subject. But this is exactly what falsifiers do not want or need!
Still photography also provides high quality images. But a static image somewhat reduces the possibility of detailed analysis of the event itself. Accordingly, NASA has published and presented on its websites many high-quality photos, allegedly taken on the joint flight.
TV coverage is the most effective means of influencing a viewing audience. This ASTP coverage created an impression of the reality of the joint flight in the majority of viewers. (The author was one of them). TV reports can be transmitted with poor to very poor quality. A viewer will attribute this poor quality to the difficulties of space communication and transmission. Poor quality pictures minimize any possibility of analyzing the video material – precisely what the falsifiers would wish.
The typical image quality of the footage ‘from space’ on the NASA recordings is demonstrated in these frame grabs (Figure 1):
In addition, the TV coverage 'from orbit' is constantly being interrupted with cutaways of interiors of control centers, concentrated faces of specialists, radio antennas of communication centers and so forth. This further hinders analysis of the situation while it intensifies the impression of this major event. Such was the television coverage prepared by the US for propaganda backup of the deception. The previous extensive Apollo Moon experience obviously helped in this regard.6
So, all the required TV reports from ‘joint orbit’ mission were prepared in advance, well before the flight. In this context, ‘prepared’ means recorded onto magnetic videotape on video recording machines in readiness for their transmission slots (there was no other carrier of recorded video at that time). Of course these TV segments and reports had to be transmitted at the right time from space to Earth.
TV coverage had to be actually transmitted from the Soyuz 19
Prepared in 1974, the TV coverage should, according to the established schedule, emanate from space the following year during the mission. It would seem that such a task should be easy to accomplish. NASA could transmit the material to its geostationary communication satellites from any convenient place on Earth, and from there the TV signal could be broadcast to the world.
But such an arrangement would immediately reveal the fakery. Communication satellites, of course, can be used for the globalization of propaganda, but at the same time those transmissions must originate from the spacecraft itself. Otherwise dozens of space communication stations on Earth and hundreds of radio amateurs would quickly establish that the source of the TV coverage was a geostationary satellite.
A geostationary satellite makes a full rotation around the Earth in exactly 24 hours, one day. For a terrestrial observer such a satellite transmits its radio signal from the same direction. That's why our home satellite dishes all look at one point in the sky; to where a geostationary satellite is fixed in the sky.
Transmitting from a manned spacecraft is another challenge entirely. At an altitude of 200-300 km it flies around the globe in just 1.5 hours. The line-of-sight time of the craft is just a few minutes.
As a communications engineer, a veteran from the Soviet MCC, explained to the author, if Soyuz 19 was not the source of the TV and radio transmission, this fact could immediately be discovered by virtually any tracking station. There were many such stations in the USSR. Of course, people serving in tracking stations will have signed non-disclosure agreements regarding their work. But the ABC of any secrecy requires that the number of those in the know must be kept to an absolute minimum.
An experienced radio amateur cannot be fooled by transmissions from a geostationary satellite. “Where are the TV signals from two docked ships moving in low-Earth orbit?” Such questions will inevitably arise. Therefore, a craft is required to actually be in low-Earth orbit. And not just a craft – the craft from which television and radio communications are to be broadcast.
The fact that Soyuz 19 will actually fly alone will not be noticed by any observer. On radar equipment screens one or two docked ships look the same – a single glowing dot on the screen. Optical telescopes are powerless during the day. They are hindered either by a bright blue sky or clouds. At night in the terrestrial shadow spacecraft are just as dark as the black sky around them.
Therefore, Soyuz 19, being alone in orbit, could safely transmit any prepared TV or radio material of the alleged rendezvous while in low-Earth orbit.
How to transmit this prepared TV coverage?
But there is another problem. The video footage was recorded on magnetic tape. But a video player would be required to replay this material, and such equipment was not specified or provided on board the Soyuz-M, as the craft's designers had duly built it in accordance with the official concepts for the joint flight.
The preparation and generation of the TV coverage was undertaken by the Americans in June 1974. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the television footage prepared was to be recorded on American video recording equipment to the US TV standard. This is even more likely taking into account that in the realm of video recording and playback the US/Japanese video equipment was much more advanced than any possessed by the Soviet specialists at the time.7
Consequently, the prepared TV coverage would be played back from an American-supplied video player. However it had to be compatible with the on-board Soyuz TV system. But how to provide such a video player without letting the developers of the Soyuz-M in on the classified aspect of this operation?
The Americans needed to have electronic simulators of the Soyuz on-board TV equipment. A plausible excuse for such a request would be found. And the Soviet specialists responded:8
It was decided to conduct compatibility tests in Houston, in a laboratory of electronic systems equipped for such tests. For this we had to make an equivalent of the Soyuz radio communications, an equivalent of wire communications and a simulator of the television camera and a television unit with a TV signal generator. These were manufactured at the beginning of January 1974 and sent to Houston.
Having received a set of these electronic simulators, the Americans could start producing a video player interface in accordance with all the necessary parameters. Nearer the time of the Soyuz 19 launch the US video player had to be installed on the Soviet craft. Then, at the right time, it was necessary to disconnect the Soyuz-19 TV equipment and connect up the video player and its associated interfaces to the on-board TV equipment chain.
As we will learn in Chapter 6, TV disconnection did indeed take place in the Soviet craft. This disconnection occurred on launch day, July 15, when the Soyuz 19 departed on the flight with a non-functioning TV system.
What was the weight of a video player in the 1970s?
There is one more important point in connection with the US video player. After all, this was going to be an additional payload for the launcher. Today we are used to video/DVD players being elegant, compact and very lightweight devices. But back in the 1970s that was far from the case. How much did a cutting-edge, US video player weigh?
Playback could have been from a 1-inch reel-to-reel analog machine, or even from an early U-matic cassette recorder and its associated equipment.7 A veteran of the national cinema, film director and cameraman Y.A. Elkhov informed the author that similar professional video equipment in those days weighed up to 200 kg. Such an additional payload for a rocket is by no means insignificant.
Until the end of 1970, the Soyuz spacecraft was launched by an 11A511 rocket. Its payload was 6650 kg.9 Therefore, the mass of the Soyuz spacecraft until the end of 1970 did not exceed that value (Soyuz from No.1 to No.9). The designers had done their best to ensure that for the ASTP flight a rocket with increased payload capacity was ready.
Since the Soyuz 10 (1971) an improved launcher 11A511U was used. It allowed increasing the craft’s weight to 6800 kg. The following Soyuz from No.11 to No.18 (except No.13, which was lighter) had such a weight. The Soyuz-M creators, of course, very closely matched the weight of the craft (6800 kg) with lift capabilities of the improved rocket.
Therefore, an additional payload of around 200 kg (for the VCR) would simply prevent the rocket from delivering Soyuz 19 into its target orbit. The payload capacity of the already improved rocket had to be increased by another 200 kg (up to 7,000 kg). And a solution as to how to achieve this capability had to be found.
ISBN: 978-1-898541-19-6
Aulis Publishers, September, 2018
English translation from the Russian by BigPhil
References
Internet links verified January 10, 2018
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