They still are very ahead — of course, the Merlin and RS-25 are amazing designs, but they're still more of the brute-force American methodology that made the Sa

They still are very ahead — of course, the Merlin and RS-25 are amazing designs, but they're still more of the brute-force American methodology that made the Saturn V so brutally effective at travelling to the moon. The Russian aerospace industry has always tried to approach rocketry with a lot more emphasis on finesse, precision, and clever engineering solutions — the astonishing reliability of the Soyuz is a testament to this. von Braun and his team at Marshall always pulled off amazing technological feats, but at the expense of greatly increased complexity and less efficiency. That legacy has largely carried on to the present day; I hope that this newer generation of American LVs (Falcon 9.1R, Vulcan) will turn things around in the opposite direction.