what's your opinion on the "real winner of the space race" argument. I don't think you respect this type of discourse but it annoys me that people assume the moon as the end goal was shared by birth sides from the beginning and i was wondering if you are annoyed by similar misconceptions
its an interesting conversation in a sense, in that both sides are pretty revisionist. soviet space program apologia would have you believe that the Soviets were doing awesome at everything and just walked away for some reason. The Soviets in reality were seriously struggling to develop heavy and superheavy lift capabilities and the space program was riven by rivalry and backbiting. N1 and Energia, as programs, both failed bigly and in N1s case spectacularly. The Soviets really failed in having a vision on What To Do In Space beyond earth orbit. That's not to say they didn't have remarkable achievements - their Venus probes were a mark of tenacity and determination - but they often ended up going "So... now what?"
Which is an interesting reversal of circumstance! the Soviets got ahead at the beginning precisely because they, unlike the Americans, saw the usefulness of a space program and had a strong vision for what needed to be done. And they marched forwards implacably. Many are also unaware that the Soviets made real long term success and had scientific achievements which NASA never matched. The Soyuz was simply unbeatable as a cheap, safe and reliable medium lift vehicle, and a man rated one at that. It wasn't surpassed until Falcon 9 just a decade ago, and the US relied on it to get to the ISS because shuttle kept eating people and cost a fortune. Soviet metallurgy and materials science in rocket engines was also more advanced than NASAs (who thought the Soviets were lying until NASA got to pick the carcass after the collapse).
Still, it failed dramatically in the later years. they had no idea what to do and were competing over lift vehicles, not in the manner of sports teams but in the manner of mob families. these failures went beyond late soviet decay and grew out of the structure of the Soviet space program, which was built out of competing and independent facilities/projects, scientist gulags where you could be imprisoned while winning the hero of the soviet union awat for being a head scientist of rocket programs, and big egos who learned that they could send state goons after rival scientists who came down on the other side of the hydrolox vs metholox debate (yes, really, that example was real)
The NASA apologists meanwhile act as if the moon landing was the only thing that mattered and are simply completely ignorant of soviet accomplishments. the "first woman in space" is the most obvious case here, but most are also completely ignorant of the Soviet Mars and Venus programs - the venutian program in particular revolutionised our understanding of the planet. The yanks, as always, are focused on thumping their chests and jerking themselves off, they even miss the real victories of the American space program, which occured long after da moon. First, Mars: the Soviets failed, despite reaching mars first, to actually succeed in doing anything on Mars, while NASA's Mars missions, which began contemporaneously with the soviet program, needs no introduction. Secondly, space stations. Mir, for all it's accomplishments, ended up being neglected and finally abandoned with astronauts inside - actually stranded and in danger, who had to be rescued by the US and their space program. in fact the entire Russian space program would be rescued by forcibly joining it at the hip to the American space program by the frankenstation we call the ISS. This was done intentionally by the US to 1 - make decoupling physically impossible and thus politically infeasible 2 throw the Russian space program a lifeline so their many rocket engineers and facilities wouldn't start building for whomever bid highest (nuclear nonproliferation was the 90s watchword) 3 create a necessary point of cooperation to ensure a diplomatic and peaceful door was always open between Russia and the US. This worked specularly, to be clear. most are unaware of how well too.
An example which I said I wouldn't bring up is also the moon program. not the landing, which was a lovely show pony and acomplishment, but the program entire. NASA didn't go to the moon, they built a long program to go to the moon over and over and over again. The Soviets could have gone to the moon - but I doubt they could have built this kind of enduring program. It was always their weakness in deep space missions.
NASA and the USSRs space program were different because their method of organisation and leadership were different. The US opted for a centralised program with decentralised facilities to force political cooperation and gaurentee funding. The Soviets opted for a bottom up program of competing facilities and teams who had to petition the central organs for funding and approval explicitly against the others. While this lead to initial gains and diversity, in the end it lead to money being spent all over on programs which were dropped and on fierce and underhanded competition for scraps, where necessary failures resulted in abortions (N1).
NASA of course would end up being bloated and putrid because of its organisation method, beholden to congressmen who just cared that factories stayed open and without the authority to actually plan the building of their own vehicles - leading to the Shuttle death trap and the 20+ years of SLS boondoggle.
