I've never seen a more accurate application of this meme, honestly. The amount of grandstanding by the US on one achievement out of a hundred is impressive.

The US still hasn't landed on Venus and probably never will

Soviets are also the only country to have landed on Venus. Not just the first, the only one.

It always comes across to me as maximum cope when Americans brag about "winning the space race". I mean, even if it was true, the US's economy was massively wealthier than the USSR's. This "race" was literally between the wealthiest country on earth and a very poor country. Even at the height of the USSR, its GDP was only about half that of the US's.

It really does not show the US's "strength" to brag so much about winning against someone with so much less resources. It's a sign of weakness to actually even be in a "race" with a developing country to begin with, which suggests they are actually competitive and have a chance of winning.

That's really what the whole "space race" shows. It does not matter who "won", the very fact a poor developing nation could compete with the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth in the first place demonstrates the extraordinary weakness of the capitalist system.

The US only placed a man on the moon because of NASA, which they founded as a direct response to the Soviets launching Sputnik. Meaning, the US literally only implemented this space program as a response to the Soviets, they were not a natural outgrowth of the US's system and would not have happened without the Soviets (as we have seen NASA massively defunded ever since). The fact the US even got on the moon in the first place only happened because of the USSR.

That was back in 1969, and we're now in 2022 yet, funnily enough, the capitalist private sector has not got a man that far yet.

—aimixin

even as an anarchist, I’ve got to hand it to the soviets on this one.

It’s two different approaches to the moon.

The Americans’ F-1 rocket engine that powered the Apollo flights was truly impressive, and remains one of the most powerful single combustion rocket engine ever made. However, they were gas generator engines that are highly inefficient, which is why today you won’t see the Americans trying to go to the moon using the same design.

The Soviet N1 moon rocket was instead powered by 30 small but far more efficient NK-15 engines. The problem for them was that the computer system used at the time (KORD) was not responsive enough to react to multiple rapidly occurring processes and which led to faulty controls during launch.

To put it another way, the Americans strapped on the bigger but less efficient rocket engines and got lucky. The Soviets tried a novel and innovative design that was way ahead of their time and failed.

However, the Soviets shall get the last laugh, because 50 years later the American SpaceX company would copy the same concept for their super heavy lift vehicle design (Super Heavy used for Starship), which in many ways conceded that the Soviet design was a more viable one.

On the left: N-1 (1969-72), on the right: SpaceX Super Heavy (April 2022, which exploded during the test launch)

Reminder that even 50 years later, SpaceX Starship also experienced failure during its first orbital test flight despite advances in technology and especially leaps in computing power.

yankoids stay losing lmaooooooo

oooh 86 comments about the space race. I’m sure this will be very normal

I didnt expect even this one to make the federated libs mad because its just... basic description of the facts. But ok.

Also, it was faked