It's crazy how thoroughly memory-holed the entirety of the soviet space program was. They clearly won the space race, both as a matter of technological progression and social milestones, but somehow the US state managed to hoodwink its people into believing that the space race was always about landing on the moon, not putting up a satellite wait no putting a person in space wait no not that one either putting a person in orbit shit they keep beating us
The arguments I hear is that the Soviets always did some "cheap" thing where it allowed them to do it first without some technological superiority which supposedly the US had, I'm not that familiar with the topic but I doubt this narrative. Also because the funnelled immense amounts of money into propaganda for the moon landing, and I assume there's a little bit to the relation between space programs and the development of nuclear warheads, where both were very related to each other, and the bellic part of it and the warmongering ended up winning rather than the actual scientific development. In the eyes of the Usonian, Soviet development of space programmes were just the scientific advancement of nuclear deterrence.
The Soviets literally won the race to space, but the Americans landing people on the moon was hella impressive. Also worth mentioning that for the past ~50 years, we've sent people to live in space stations (Soviet invention) but not back to the moon (American accomplishment). And of course the Soyuz rocket remained relevant this entire time. But either way, space exploration is awesome! I love both space agencies :)
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