we like to make fun of the american space program because they were behind in a bunch of milestones, but damn, landing on the moon is pretty fuckin good IMO.
like I don't really think of it as an american victory over the Soviets, but as a general human accomplishment, landing on the moon is pretty much one of the best we got.
Soviet accomplishments in space stations are probably as important or more important but damn, humans landed on the fuckin moon. holy shit!
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I don't like calling it a "human" achievement.
If it had been the Nazis who made it there, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to say the same. It's the same with the US doing it for me, if maybe slightly less disgusting. It feels like humanity is doomed to remember it this way: the ones who slaughtered and enslaved their way into global domination were rewarded with the moon.
There is also the context of it that I can't abstract away. It was clearly a political and military move as much as, as well as, or moreso than a scientific one, and one designed to justify capitalism over socialism. It's like congratulating Christopher Columbus for finding the Americas, the British for conquering half the world, or some other superlative divorced from the motives and tragedy that allowed or followed it.
Also I'm just a sucker for the smaller victories that get ignored. Like how the enslaved young Edmond Albius domesticated vanilla for the first time by hand pollinating it. He changed the world and performed a human first in history, but this achievement is not glorified as much.