This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Anatoly Zach. He keeps the Russian

space web, a subscription site I highly recommend because we're going to 1975. It's July 15th,

1975, which my calculations says 50 years ago right now. We are at Tour Tam, also known as

Bikinor, the launch site of a Soyuz U rocket with Commander Alexei Leonoff on top. He's a legend

and flight engineer Valerie Kubasov. This is the Soviet Union, Ross Cosmos, at exactly

the launch date at 1220 GMT, which is 1520 Moscow, and 820 in the morning, Eastern Daylight Time.

The Soyuz-U-Sou19 lifts off.

The mission is everything.

The mission is about geopolitics.

It's about detain.

It's about two very giant powers at odds over everything in Europe for the last 40 years, correcting

themselves and demonstrating friendship

in space. This is the Apollo Soyuz meeting in space, and to help us understand the drama of it,

the success of it, I welcome Anatoly Zach. Anatoly, a very good evening to you. The mission was to rendezvous in space

between two very different programs, Ross Cosmos with the Soyuz and NASA with the Apollo. This is after

the moon launch, of course. That happened in 69. The Apollo craft will follow, but let's first go to the launch of the Soyuz U rocket.

It was immediately a problem with television.

What happened, Anatoly.

Good evening to you.

Hello, John.

Yes, it was very interesting mission, very dramatic, and yes, I actually encountered a number of technical issues. Right the start, actually a few minutes before launch of the Soviet spacecraft.

They had an issue with television.

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