Planning continues for Apollo-Soyuz as the Soviet team arrive in Houston and begin butting heads with their NASA counterparts.
Tropes
- Common Knowledge: Happens in-universe. Since the action is taking place in 1983, the actual fate of Laika
is still being classified, thus everyone is still convinced the dog survived for a week and died peacefully. - In Spite of a Nail: For all the progress in technology and far, far more advanced space programs on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Apollo-Soyuz mission happens whole 8 years later than it did in real-life. Not due to lack of tech, but due to lack of goodwill and interest on both sides to even bother.
- Insistent Terminology: The Soviets want to call the mission Soyuz-Apollo, not Apollo-Soyuz. They also take issue with NASA designating their crew "astronauts 3 and 4", preferring "cosmonauts 1 and 2". The issue of the name of the mission is how it went in real-life, with both sides using "their" order ever since.
- Lampshade Hanging: When the Soviets bring a basket present to their American counterparts, there is a signed photo of Alexei Leonov on top of it. In-universe, he's the first man on the moon. In real life, Leonov was the commander of Soyuz 19, which took part in Apollo-Soyuz mission.
- Mirroring Factions: Both space programs are hamstrung by Obstructive Bureaucrats and politicians. The mission itself is openly torpedoed by administration on both sides, trying to put pressure on the other superpower to just backdown and end up being the guilty party of the mission failing. This in turn is reverse of what real Apollo-Soyuz was.
- Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Danielle and cosmonaut Orlov discuss Laika, the dog who went to space (and died) in Sputnik 2. Danielle treats it as a noble sacrifice that aided human knowledge; Orlov regards it as the needless murder of an innocent animal who had no idea what was being done to her.
- The Stoic: The duo of Soviet cosmonauts is completely unphased with anything, aren't particularly talkative and are just doing their job, not showing much interest beyond bare minimum with the symbolic nature of their mission.
- Not So Stoic: They do, however, have their curiosities about American lifestyle and products (particularly Jack Daniel's), and open up a bit when drinking together.
- Vodka Drunkenski: When Danielle and Radislav are drinking together, she's taking small sips from the same glass, while he keeps downing his whole drink each time. Meanwhile, when pulling an all-nighter in a design office, Sergei points out he's "not drunk... not much".
