Well this isn't remotely historically accurate. The Soviets kicked ass in space for over a decade. They were first in basically everything... first satellite, first astronaut, first probe to reach the moon, first to image the far side of the moon, etc, etc. It wasn't even close. American politicians/generals/scientists were all shitting bricks every time a new first was made.
Of course in hindsight we know that a lot of that progress was possible because the Soviets were directing all available resources towards a few areas, and ignoring the butter side of the guns-and-butter equation, but at the time the West was absolutely terrified of the threat of Soviet scientific domination.
Well this isn't remotely historically accurate. The Soviets kicked ass in space for over a decade. They were first in basically everything... first satellite, first astronaut, first probe to reach the moon, first to image the far side of the moon, etc, etc. It wasn't even close. American politicians/generals/scientists were all shitting bricks every time a new first was made.
Of course in hindsight we know that a lot of that progress was possible because the Soviets were directing all available resources towards a few areas, and ignoring the butter side of the guns-and-butter equation, but at the time the West was absolutely terrified of the threat of Soviet scientific domination.
Agreed. If only the Soviets manage to do one thing US still couldn't do yet-
The Soviets certainly won't, and I doubt the Russians will either. But the Chinese very well might.
Given that the Chinese have shown absolutely no interest in landings with people on other bodies, I very much doubt it. Given that Trump is pushing for a Mars-first strategy (while most experts recommend a trial on the moon for the purpose of learning how to do it), I doubt we would have a workable strategy either.
China only cares about Earth orbit, especially in the sense of communications and surveillance. There are no practical benefits of going beyond this field and no desire, as of yet, in doing so.
This kinda ignores our reliance on using Russian rockets to transport stuff to the ISS and also us buying rockets from them to use.
If I recall there was an interesting article on Ars Technica about one article that came from like a veteran cosmonaut. Was interesting in that it was in like one of the Russian government backed newspapers, but the article was actually rather critical of the government mismanagement of the Russian space program. Equating the American money paying for seats to the ISS as like a drug that their space program has become addicted to and dependent on. Effectively the cost of like one seat was like worth their entire yearly budget, but their current management was instead pocketing all the excess money instead of reinvesting it back into their space program. He was rather hopeful that as the end of the US money for seats is coming, that it would force them to finally realize how far their program has fallen behind and instead work to rebuild it and modernize it.
Though it was interesting when it came to the space race as the US actually was more like the Soviets in that they had one central authority coordinating everything, while the Soviets ended up operating more like what the US would normally do with several competing groups. Pretty much allowed the US to be able to catch up, while it ended up slowing down the Soviets.
Well this isn't remotely historically accurate. The Soviets kicked ass in space for over a decade. They were first in basically everything... first satellite, first astronaut, first probe to reach the moon, first to image the far side of the moon, etc, etc. It wasn't even close. American politicians/generals/scientists were all shitting bricks every time a new first was made.
Of course in hindsight we know that a lot of that progress was possible because the Soviets were directing all available resources towards a few areas, and ignoring the butter side of the guns-and-butter equation, but at the time the West was absolutely terrified of the threat of Soviet scientific domination.
I'll definitely agree that it's a little silly to act like actually landing on the moon is the only thing that counts, and that the moonshot was made so famous because that was the one that propaganda was made of, while only people who were studying space really even heard about most of the other firsts Russia managed to claim.
That said, most politicians/generals weren't shitting bricks and generally just didn't care, because they knew how far the Russians were ahead, and didn't feel like it was worth competing over until JFK tried to make rallying into a national issue. Eisenhower basically reacted to Sputnik by going golfing.
Rocketry is kind of an oddity in that it's one of the few "non-military" research institutions that governments will fund with the kind of overwhelming funding that normally gets thrown at defense department projects. (If we'd thrown the money we used trying to make the Osprey at medical research, we'd have likely cured cancer and been working on lifespan extension technologies by now...) The big reason the USA and USSR spent so much on it was because they were basically advertisements for the development of ICBM technology. A rocket that can reach the moon (passenger or no passenger) is a missile that is more than capable of delivering a truly massive nuclear warhead to any spot on the Earth, after all, as the differences in distance are utterly ludicrous. (This is why the USSR was willing to spend so much - nuclear deterrence was seen as a matter of existential necessity.)
Meanwhile, to speak to what NWF Renim is talking about, it certainly makes sense that modern Russia is just exploiting its temporary advantage for immediate relief rather than reinvesting - if the economy of Russia doesn't recover, it's just not going to be able to afford future space travel. The US spends so little on NASA relative to its budget (even before talking about bringing the private sector into it) that we could easily do much more without significantly impacting our national budget. It's just that, without the excuse that it's going to nuclear deterrence, NASA's been gutted ever since the fall of the Soviet Union.
I've tried to tag the spacecraft pictured here. The broken Soviet rocket is the N1; to its left is the LK lander it would have taken to the moon. Next to that is the Apollo lunar module. America is of course holding a Saturn V rocket and a Space Shuttle. The remaining American craft are I think all from the Mercury programme; a Mercury capsule in the foreground, and off to the left the Redstone (standing) and Atlas (lying) launch vehicles.
Several of these seem a bit off in the details; I'm inclined to attribute that to the artist, but if you think you have a better match for any of them go ahead and change the tags.
Not as much as you might think. *clears thoat* "Look at all these great things that you accomplished that people don't really care about as much as they do a relatively useless trick we performed on the Moon." At least Sputnik is still a well-recognized name.