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 became elite fighter pilots, and 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. It was a feat that won him a place in history, but almost cost him his life. A year later, in 1966, astronauts David Scott and Neil Armstrong were seconds away from dying as their spacecraft, Gemini 8, spun violently out of control across space. Both men survived against dramatic odds and went on to fly their own lunar missions: Armstrong to command Apollo 11 and Scott to command the most complex expedition in the history of exploration, Apollo 15. Spending three days on the moon, Scott became the seventh man to walk on its breathtaking surface. Marking a new age of US/USSR co-operation, the Apollo Soyuz Test Project brought Scott and Leonov together, finally ending the Cold War silence and building a friendship that would last for decades.

"Dave Scott and Alexei Leonov have each borne the enormous responsibility of commanding spacecraft and of representing their respective countries in the most fascinating and most expensive race in human history. This is their transcendent recounting of that competition."
- Neil Armstrong, from the Foreword

"Leonov and Scott have gone to extra lengths to explain the inexplicable in Two Sides of the Moon. And thank goodness they have. Theirs was a gamble taken voluntarily and eagerly with the single-minded pursuit of earning the assignment and then getting the job done. Sometimes they were first. Often they were best. Always they were colorful. And yet each time they returned, neither man claimed to have come back a changed man who had gone into space and seen the spirit of the universe. They came back from their missions in space having seen the spirit of themselves as even more of the human beings they were before leaving our world of air, land, and water.... Leonov, the artist and Scott, the engineer/dreamer. The two of them-the Cheaters of Death."
- Tom Hanks, from the Introduction

"What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon, but that they set eye on the Earth."
- Norman Cousins