Two Sides of the Moon

Growing up on either side of the Iron Curtain, Alexei Leonov and David Scott shared the same dream -- to become a pilot. Excelling at flying, they were chosen by their countries' burgeoning space programmes to be part of the greatest technological race ever -- to land a man on the moon. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to walk in space. He won a place in history, but almost lost his life. In 1966, David Scott and Neil Armstrong were seconds away from dying as Gemini 8 spun violently out of control across space. Both men survived against dramatic odds and Scott went on to command the most complex expedition in the history of space exploration, Apollo 15. When the US and USSR space programmes were eventually brought together in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Scott and Leonov finally met. The project marked the end of the Cold War silence and started a friendship that would last for decades.