> [...] I still think that other nations [...] have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side If you argue that wa

> [...] I still think that other nations [...] have had a huge helping hand by leveraging the US's pioneering work on the engineering side If you argue that way, one could just as well say that the US leveraged other nation's know-how to get into space in the first place... This idea also quickly falls apart if you'd just take a look at the pioneering work the Soviets did. Most of the firsts in space weren't done by the US. As great as NASA was/is, not every great accomplishment was based on their work. The engineering side in particular was done independently and arguably better in some regards elsewhere (Soyuz for example, which incidentally is the basis for the manned Chinese capsules as well).