332995
332995

Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race

2014-10-13
7.3
en 90m
Documentary
When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, America went down in popular history as the winner of the space race. But that history is bunk. The real pioneers of space exploration were the Soviet cosmonauts. This remarkable feature-length documentary combines rare and unseen archive footage with interviews with the surviving cosmonauts to tell the fascinating and at times terrifying story of how the Russians led us into the space age. A particular highlight is Alexei Leonov, the man who performed the first spacewalk, explaining how he found himself trapped outside his spacecraft 500 miles above the Earth. Scary stuff.

Director

Michael Lachmann

Writer

Michael Lachmann

Camera Operator

Neil Kent

Production Manager

Rebecca Lavender

Music

Andy Hopkins

Editor

Gerard Evans

soviet union space

Status

Released

Countries

  • United Kingdom

Companies

  • BBC