Alexei Leonov exited the Voskhod 2 spacecraft today and spent twelve minutes floating in space outside the capsule. The first human extravehicular activity.

The Soviets did it again. Got there first.

But here’s what the Soviets didn’t announce publicly: Leonov almost didn’t make it back inside.

His suit ballooned in the vacuum of space — the internal pressure pushed the suit outward, making it rigid and much larger than when he’d put it on. When he tried to re-enter the airlock, he couldn’t fit. He spent eight minutes trying to get back in while his carbon dioxide level was rising and his body temperature was increasing from the exertion.

He had to bleed pressure from his suit — reduce the internal pressure below the minimum safe margin — to make himself small enough to fit through the airlock. He did this successfully and got back in. Nobody outside the Soviet program knew this for decades.

If he hadn’t been able to bleed the suit down, he would have died outside the spacecraft.

I mention this not to diminish the achievement — Leonov’s EVA was remarkable, and he handled a life-threatening situation with calm and competence — but to illustrate that the Soviet program’s relationship with risk was different from ours in a specific way: they didn’t always tell the public about the problems.

The Voskhod 2 mission also had trouble with the automatic landing system, forcing the crew to land manually in a remote forest area of the Ural mountains. They spent two nights in the forest before recovery teams could reach them.

An airlock failure, a suit that nearly killed the cosmonaut, a manual landing in a forest. The public announcement described it as a complete success.

I don’t begrudge them the achievement. Leonov went outside and came back. That’s extraordinary. But when I compare American openness about Mercury and Gemini problems (Carpenter’s overshoot, Glenn’s heat shield concern, the Apollo 1 investigation) with Soviet opacity, I appreciate the American approach more. We learn from public failures. Hidden failures are hidden problems.

The Ed White EVA is next for us. He’ll do it right, with proper training and a suit that works. We’ll see.