"It's the russian equivalent of the crown jewels." Doug Millard is not exaggerating when he describes the vast collection of Russian space hardware that makes up the exhibition Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age. It's the first time such a huge array of Soviet-era space hardware and memorabilia have been exhibited in one place at the same time and, perhaps more astonishingly, not in Moscow. "It's been four years of hard work to gather them together," says Millard, senior curator of the exhibition at London's Science . Museum, "and, quite frankly, they're priceless." This isn't hyperbole. The exhibits from the early era of space flight in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Soviet Union led the race into Earth orbit, are a source of huge national pride for both the Russian government and its people. Sputnik 1 was the world's first artificial satellite. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, Valentina Tereshkova the first woman. And Alexei Leonov was the first person to walk in space. The USSR was streets ahead of the US, its closest rival.
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