The first time that Soviet and American spacemen were in space at the same time was Skylab SL-4 (space station) and the Soviet Soyuz 13, which never docked with

The first time that Soviet and American spacemen were in space at the same time was Skylab SL-4 (space station) and the Soviet Soyuz 13, which never docked with a space station. This was the final flight to Skylab, and that crew left before the follow-on Soyuz 14 docked with Salyut 3, so at no point during the US-Soviet space race were there two separately crewed space stations in orbit. But just as a pedantic note, I really object to calling this China's first space station. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 both were just as much a space station as Skylab or a Salyut[1]. The current Tiangong is indeed the first complex, ISS like space-station, of multiple components launched separately, but that's not the same thing as a space station. So I would say that the three previous Chinese flights to Tiangong-1 and -2 (Shenzhou-9, Shenzhou-10, and Shenzhou-11) all should count as the first times that there were two separately crewed space stations in orbit. Obviously, the other station in all three cases was the International Space Station program, which has had people in space continuously since November 1st, 2000 (it is my hope and dream that October 31st of the year 2000 becomes a very important day in human history- that last day that all of humanity was together on the same planet). [1]: Technically two separate programs, the military OPS and the Civilian DOS programs, but both were the same as far as assembly goes: launched in one piece from a heavy lift rocket.