Exactly. Also, there's a meme that "the Russians beat us to space in the '50s because they were cutting so many safety corners". Bullshit. Not only is it not t

Exactly. Also, there's a meme that "the Russians beat us to space in the '50s because they were cutting so many safety corners". Bullshit. Not only is it not true, it's not even a good story to teach your kids. "So, you're saying if I cheat I could win?" Good job, dad. Reality not only has the advantage of being, well, real, but the story is that much better. The Russians won the first round because they were laser-focused on the goal, while America was twiddling its thumbs. They had a genius engineer, Sergey Korolev (pronounced: Karalyov), who was like von Braun and James Webb put together, only better, and was dreaming of sending people to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond. They had a forward thinking leader in Nikita Khrushchev, who was a passionate supporter of the space program, and would give Korolev nearly a blank check each year. And they never put any airgap between military rocket research (ICBMs) and civilian space programs - Korolev & Co built both. It also helped that Korolev was an excellent leader who could motivate his teams to crank out 80 hour weeks and love it and be proud of it. Kind of like Elon Musk, come to think of it. So of course they were first to throw Sputnik 1 up into space, and the first to send Gagarin on a world tour in orbit. And then in the mid-60s Korolev died, and Khrushchev got sacked and replaced by stuck-in-the-past Brezhnev. Political will disappeared, funding dried out. They didn't have money to do proper testing on the N1 (their Saturn V equivalent, the Moon rocket), so they did all their testing "in production", during real launches - with results that you could sadly very well imagine. And meanwhile JFK gave his famous speech ("this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth"). And billions of dollars started pouring into the industry, and the sleeping american industrial complex giant woke up. And we won the second round, the race to the Moon, fair and square. It turns out, if you are 100% focused, and you work really hard, and you're passionate - you win. Who knew? And it worked for both sides in that race, but during different rounds in the game. And only afterwards did the Soviets start cutting safety corners, and only then did Vladimir Komarov crash after re-entry. Always tell true stories. Bullshit doesn't help anyone in the long run.