On 17th July 1975, at the height of perhaps the most consequential competition ever between two adversaries, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to cooperate instead of continuing to compete, linking their most prized possessions in the most hostile environments. They each loved ground on 15 July the American astronaut Stafford Brandon Slayton from Kennedy Space Center and the Soviet Cosmodrome Sleonov and Kubasov from Baikonov Cosmodrome. The Apollo Soyuz or Soyuz Apollo test project was technically designed to test compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems for American Soviet spacecraft and paved the way to future international space exploration. The project signaled the end of that chapter of the space race in which each side will win one round only to lose the next and then lose around the win one right after. A new chapter is opening that involves not just two main actors but many and not just state actors but private ones as well. This new chapter bears unprecedented potential for advances across all sciences to create and sustain life as much as to destroy it. And as in the first chapter of the space race these advances will have a security dimension and global decision makers will have to consider whether to cooperate or to compete. For the most weighty of these decisions the example set by the Apollo Soyuz test project is worth remembering and celebrating.