E-Books →Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth

The shift toward collaboration was a resultofa new focus on safety, which displaced the earlier emphasis on risk-taking in the first phaseofthe space race, when military imperatives often overshadowed peaceful goals. Apollo-Soyuz (ignored by Cold War historians) was thus imagined as a test project for a docking mechanism that would allow a manned-capsule stranded in orbit to dock with another capsule and provide an escape hatch back to earth (it was actually inspired, in part, by the 1969 Hollywood film "Marooned" with Gene Hackman). The focus on engineering for safety grew outofthe broader concerns about environmental degradation and nuclear war that in turn reflected a growing sense in the 1970s and 1980softhe dangers associated with excessive risk-taking in politics and engineering. Few historians or social scientists have examined the social constructionofsafety and its use in engineering and politics.
The book draws on the Russian AcademyofSciences Archives, Nixon and Reagan libraries and National Archives Collections, NASA headquarters library documents, and various memoirs and other published sources in English and Russian.