> Yet the US space program existed solely and exclusively due to a large and heavily centralized governmental effort. That's not quite the right conclusion to

> Yet the US space program existed solely and exclusively due to a large and heavily centralized governmental effort. That's not quite the right conclusion to draw from this. The US could afford to put a humongous amount of resources into its space program because of the productive output unleashed by capitalism and a market-based economy. For example, the US spent a lot of money on a brute-force approach to fixing the combustion instability problems in the huge F-1 engines through trial-and-error; the USSR could not afford to do this, and was forced to go with a much larger number of smaller engines (which due to budgetary constraints couldn't be tested together before the actual launch, with catastrophic consequences).