COMPETITION WITH THE SOVIETS

Russell Schweickart → It was partly a race with the Soviets, but more than anything else for me, it was doing something that was clearly right in terms of human destiny. It was clear we had to go to the Moon. It was a very logical step. There was the race to the Moon, but we, frankly, a number of us at least, would cheer when the Soviets would do another thing because it would incentivize our leadership and our managers to be a little less risk averse than they would’ve been. And so, while on the one hand there was a competition, at the same time, at least for me, it was very much humanity moving out as it should into the larger universe. I often say that we went to the Moon as a national program, but when we go to Mars and beyond, as far as I’m concerned, we will be people from planet Earth. And, I think we will do this internationally and cooperatively, and that to me is the way it should be.

Michael Collins → Well, 1969 was a year of the Cold War. We were not friendly with the Soviet Union. The Paris Air Show was neutral territory. I expected perhaps a tinge of hostility from them. I got none. We concentrated more on the fact that we had similarities in our background rather than political different systems in our background. They flew airplanes, we flew airplanes. We lived in the sky, they lived in the sky. We concentrated more on those similarities than our political differences. I got along very well with Pavel. He seemed like someone that I could go out and have a beer with on very friendly terms. And for the moment, at least, we forgot the latent hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union. [Collins met cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev at the 1969 Paris Air Show after his lunar expedition.]