I'm John Batscher with David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show, my colleague

and co-pilot, and we're flying back into history. It is August of 1974. Two rookies,

Ganadi Sarraaffenov, commander, and Lev Demen, the flight engineer, are launched instead of the veteran

Valinov, are launched to rendezvous with a secret space station, a Soviet space Station named Diamond, OPS2.

The launch goes off according to plan and as Anatoly is already described, it comes to a near catastrophe.

And my simple question Anatole is, did Sarafenov or Demen?

Did they have anything to do with the Miss rendezvous were were they adequate to the mission or were

they just passengers? Yes so it's a very good question and it's a little bit complicated.

So let's explain this.

So essentially, during this particular period of time,

during this phase of the program,

all rendezvous and docking operations at Borde Soyuz were performed automatically.

So the crew mission was kind of monitor the systems and make sure that everything works as planned, which the crew did.

But actual docking all the maneuvering, all the measurements of the mutual motion between the space station and the spacecraft

were performed automatically.

Based on this information,

flight control system was generating commands

to the propulsion system to push the spacecraft in the right direction,

to slow it down during the final approach,

and to perform the actual docking, the physical connection of the spacecraft. All of this would be done automatically without

crude touching any buttons at all. However, as a result of this very serious accident,

and it was not the first one,

...