The Reason This Space Docking Module Was Androgynous

Adam Savage visits Smithsonian’s ‪@airandspace‬ Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar to examine a piece of Cold War space history: the APAS-75 (Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System) from the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). As Apollo curator Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony and conservator Elizabeth Beesley explain, this module -- designed during the Cold War -- served as a universal airlock and docking interface that not only bridged two different spacecraft, but two radically different engineering philosophies as well. From contrasting U.S. and Soviet machining styles to bilingual Russian/English cockpit labeling to the conservation challenges of deteriorating insulation, join Adam for an inside look at the hardware that made history's most famous handshake in space possible. What do you think of the "androgynous" solution? Source: