Apollo–Soyuz Test Project made the Soviet Union's policy of détente official in his 1956 doctrine of peaceful coexistence at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the two nations seemed to be in perpetual conflict. Due to tense relations, space cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union was unlikely in the early 1970s. On June 7, 1971, the USSR had launched the first piloted orbital space station, Salyut 1. Meanwhile, the United States had launched the Apollo 14 mission several months prior, the third spacecraft to land humans on the moon. Each side gave the other little
Apollo 1 Michael Collins and William Anders. McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart had started their training for AS-258 in CM-101 at the NAA plant in Downey, California, when the Apollo 1 accident occurred. Once all outstanding CSM-012 hardware problems were fixed, the reassembled spacecraft finally completed a successful altitude chamber test with Schirra's backup crew on December 30. According to the final report of the accident investigation board, "At the post-test debriefing the backup flight crew expressed their satisfaction with the condition and performance of the spacecraft." This would appear to contradict the account given in "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo