Space Race

In honour of Yuri's Night, I'd like to point to this rather nice BBC documentary:

It casts the space race as a personal competition between Sergei Korolyov and Werner von Braun, and is mostly recreations and dramatizations (including the peculiar decision to have the Russians speak English with a Russian accent, except for commands like "Ignition" and "Launch", which the actors could presumably learn and are subtitled). But it's generally well made, and doesn't shy away from either von Braun's Nazi past or the military applications that drove the space race itself: a rocket that could put a man into orbit could also deliver a warhead to a major city, and vice versa. From a public relations point of view, announcing a new milestone in the space race generally went over better than announcing one's ability to more effectively kill millions of people.