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First Lunar flyby, first Lunar probe landing, first photos from surface, first Lunar rover - all Soviets. Crewed landing is a massive achievement, but it being
by abcd_f 17d ago
First Lunar flyby, first Lunar probe landing, first photos from surface, first Lunar rover - all Soviets.
Crewed landing is a massive achievement, but it being the finish line of the race is the US framing, primarily due to getting beaten in all other firsts.
- m4rtink 17d agoSure, but another aspect of winning a race can be the other party quitting. The Soviets scrapped the N1 (like, they scrapped functional hardware, including many flight ready engines) and pretended they never were in a race to land on the Moon. They did start on many LEO space stations that the US had no good answer to, but its questionable if this was still the same race or a race at all. Many people expected the race to just go on - lunar bases, Mars, etc. Given that nothing like that really happened post US landing on the moon, one could really say the race was over the final victory belonged to the US.