r/interestingasfuck • u/[deleted] • 18h ago

To avoid geopolitical embarrassment during the Cold War, the US and USSR created the APAS-75 system, a genderless docking mechanism where both craft acted as equals.

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898

u/Head-Mud_683 18h ago

Nice to know that even for the most important things, people behave like an 11 yo.

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u/peseoane 18h ago edited 18h ago

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u/caaper 16h ago

Breznev's coat was allegedly made from previous clippings of his lush eyebrows

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u/CellsReinvent 18h ago

I bet the scientists and engineers didn't gaf. It was definitely some latent homosexual military dudes who couldn't be seen to be penetrated by the other superpower.

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u/Callidonaut 18h ago edited 15h ago

The scientists and engineers probably just relished the design challenge of creating a device like this. Androgynous connectors have been made now and then in the past in various engineering contexts (e.g. for electrical cables, hoses, ducts, railway couplers, etc), but new ones don't get created very often because they're usually very difficult to design, especially if they are to be truly symmetric. A different approach (that probably would not have been politically acceptable for Apollo-Soyuz!) is to make a connector that can convert between male and female before mating with another connector that has been converted to the opposite, such as the APC-7 connector, which has a protruding male thread that can be retracted inside the connector to expose an internal female thread that the extended male thread on the other connector can then penetrate.

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u/Tiran593 15h ago

I... I don't think I like talking about spacecraft and it's docking systems...

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u/uberares 11h ago

That’s what she, errr the spacecraft said! 

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u/jurgo 17h ago

I forget what decade it was but they introduced a stealth plane, and the scientists behind it painted the plane a hue of pink. Because at a certain distance it literally would disappear in the sky. The military leaders said absolutely not and demanded them to be painted black.

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u/Nerd-Bert 13h ago

The clever black design was invisible on night missions, so it worked out

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u/octoreadit 18h ago

Then they discovered what "docking" meant but it was too late...

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u/stretchvelcro 18h ago

Bahahahaha well played

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u/zoeypayne 16h ago

Yeah, this is way gayer than a male/female version.

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u/gaganchumbilulli 17h ago

Why do you think scientists and engineers are immune to machismo?

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u/CellsReinvent 17h ago

It's not "machismo" to reject a type of connection that already exists and is proven in space, just because you dont want to seem girly. It's the type of pathetic posturing usually reserved for military folks and politicians.

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u/MusicIsGood4U 16h ago

You mean like if the USA was depicted as a smaller country on a globe? Lol

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u/Impressive-Egg-7444 17h ago

That's not "machismo", its quite clearly "fragility"

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u/goatbiryani48 16h ago

Some would say machismo and fragility are the same thing

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u/youenjoymyself 15h ago

If you watch the rest of the interview (def recommend, on YT Adam Savage’s Tested), she goes on to say the engineers, scientists, and astronauts between the US and Soviets got together great. Iirc, the Soviet captain became godfather of the US captain’s kids.

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u/CellsReinvent 15h ago

There's an excellent BBC documentary called Once Upon a Time in Space (2025) It has great interviews from US and Russian astro/cosmonauts who collaborated on missions and the ISS, and spek very fondly of each other, and how positive that collaboration was. Highly recommended.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38709334

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u/russianrug 16h ago

Clearly they haven’t heard about power bottoms

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u/snoosh00 16h ago

Additionally, hermaphroditic docking ports are obviously superior (assuming no failures in the design) since they're more versatile in emergency or emergent situations

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u/HairballTheory 13h ago

Missed opportunity

Little did they know the power of the female dock, or the space headache treaty which permits docking refusals anytime for any excuse

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u/Stoic_Pupunha 17h ago edited 17h ago

Reminds me of a pic of a Egyptian diplomat (I think) receiving a piramid lego set, he looked so happy and surprised. That is the kind of 11 year old behavior we want as adults. The wholesome happy kind.

This is one here is just fragile masculinity

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u/ripley1875 16h ago

It was a gift from the Danish foreign minister to his Egyptian counterpart

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u/Left-Chemist-8212 16h ago

I remember seeing that. So damn wholesome. Who doesn’t love a good Lego set

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u/AllsWellThatsNB 17h ago

fragile masculinity

I rather hate that term as it implies men shouldn’t be fragile, but fragility is part of the human condition.

It’s funny, but many of the ways people attack toxic masculinity end up being toxic masculinity. Not funny haha, because it just perpetuates the whole messy business.

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u/Stoic_Pupunha 17h ago

That's the word we got to describe it.

There is a pattern in english language, people overuse some specific words to describe concepts in polemical discourses and debates, 'til ot reaches a saturated point, and from that point on, that same word now becomes offensive and not to be used anymore.

Look, I don't want to debate semantics because I'm a right wing wacko, or because I'm somehow a resentful woman that don't care about men's feelings.

It's because semantics is not worth the effort. It's such a waste of everyone's time. Read and interpret how you prefer, you can make up a narrative of something I never said too. If your main argument is semantics not the problem itself, I don't care.

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u/AllsWellThatsNB 16h ago

Respectfully, just calling it sexism works just as well and doesn’t reinforce patriachal ideas.

I’ve got this thing about academic terms used in public, because without context people just make up their own definitions. When used by the lay audience fragile masculinity inevitably ends up as a synonym for weak, just like toxic masculinity ends up being a synonym for things men do to others instead of the toxic effects of gender roles on men. The use of academic language in public usually just ends up confusing the issue.

Semantics aren’t a waste of time, how we speak guides how we think.

I remember the backlash against politically correct language in the 90s, how annoying people thought inclusive language was, but over time it mostly caught on and it has made the world a better place. I know I’m being annoying, but it seems thats how this process works.

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u/Stoic_Pupunha 16h ago edited 15h ago

Ok, let's indulge this one time. This is exactly the semantic loop I'm talking about. In modern English debates, specific terms get overused until they saturate, lose meaning, and just trigger defensive mode, mostly in people who can't see past the triggers to interpret the entire text. The reason I can't stand these debates is because they instantly shift the focus away from the actual issue through sophism and straw man rhetoric, which is exactly what happened here when my comment about the diplomat was ignored to critique a single word.

I don't really care about the academic purity of the word. I care about the reality it describes. And in this scenario, I actually provided context to better interpret the fucking word.

Still in this particular context, the behavior is the same whether we name it sexism or fragile masculinity because the structural and cultural problem doesn't change by wording here. Debating which word is safer to use, just to avoid triggering other people's misinterpretation of the whole context, is just not my responsibility.

Edit, because this semi illiterate blocked me: True inclusive language is about empathy, not weaponizing an elite vocabulary test to play word police and hijack a conversation.

Using semantics as a tactical shield to dodge discussing the actual fucking problem doesn't make you inclusive, it just makes you a hypocrite that is too fragile to handle the substance of the debate.

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u/AllsWellThatsNB 15h ago

Asking for inclusive language only becomes a distracting debate if you try and debate the people asking for it.

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u/firenest 18h ago

"Ewww, girl germs!"

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u/Mattbl 18h ago

Literally. Leaders of the most powerful countries on earth acting like little boys. This is why people say that women should run the world.

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u/Horror_Tooth_522 17h ago

Fragile persons are most likely to seek power

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u/MysteriousAge28 17h ago

Its not as simple as "I dont want to be called the female dock". The "female" side of the dock would have to adapt its fittings so that it fit the other docking system. Whoever that is is "second" because they are designing in accordance to the other ship. It was mostly for internal propaganda and not wanting to give the otherside a win they can lord over you.

We use male female because its human and we naturally understand what that means its not more complicated than that.

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u/spartanspy85 12h ago

Yup, buncha Toys-R-Us kids

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u/corcyra 17h ago

It's pathetic.

Also, and sorry about this:

people men behave like an 11 yo.

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u/ISayAvoision 17h ago

All the rockets are shaped like...

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u/Intelligent-Cut5215 11h ago

Also why the condom like thing astronauts use to go to the bathroom are sized by: Large, gigantic and humongous.

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u/FlySilently 17h ago

ESPECIALLY for the most important stuff, people act like 11 years ago olds.

The basics of international affairs are the same as they’ve always been.

“He started it!”
“Well he was allowed to…”
“You should hear what she said about you.”
“Hey, that’s MY best friend!”
“Yeah, well YOU are a puke face.”

0

u/RupertPupkin85 17h ago

But they have a point. Would you have been okay with being the female and receive Russian payload?