My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the go

My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. While the Russian program was chronically underfunded and had limited politburo support. They had to produced products to barter for other things they needed. And they had a capricious “customer” with bizarre requirements (as with the local content one above) and who only cared about one thing. Basically perpetually a startup. In essence each country’s program was organized the way you would have expected the other country’s program to have been run.