Gen. Tom Stafford, who helped bring Cold War enemies together in cooperation 140 miles above the Earth, died in a retirement home near Cape Canaveral on Monday at the age of 93. Stafford was the commander of an American capsule that docked with a Soviet Soyuz ship in July of 1975, heralding decades of future cooperation in space between the two earthly rivals. “I’m sure we have opened up a new era in the history of man,” he told the two Soviet astronauts, Lt. Col. Aleksei A. Leonov and Valery N. Kubasov. Deke Slayton and Vance Brand were also on the American ship.
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