Any time you criticize the US, someone will inevitably come back with "Well at least we landed on the Moon." Like who the fuck cares, it happened 50 years ago. It's annoying as fuck and I live in this country.
Interestingly enough the Soviets also sent the first African-American to space. Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez from Cuba in 1980.
They also had a mission with Pham Tuan, the first Asian astronaut
They also had the first woman in space.
Today she's being sanctioned by the west for being a member of the Russian parliament.
anyone who is really into manned space travel has brainworms from watching too much scifi as a child
Soviet Union was also the first and still only ones to land a probe on Venus, albeit accidentally
Knowing very little about the event, I think I was just picturing a sputnik satellite crash landing and not a purpose built craft lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera nah it was very intentional! first soft landing on another planet, first picture of another planet. one of em was accidentially in earth orbit until like 2022, unfortunately didn't take out the white house on its way back down
Commies won the space race. Deal with it, western pig-dogs :fidel-cool:
I’ve posted this elsewhere but
I agree that the USSR won the space race if we’re counting pure number of achievements, but it’s a bad argument to make because they’re no longer around to defend it. Even Russia barely celebrates the Soviet achievements these days. Similarly to how Apple is not the first to do jack shit that pushes technology further, they’re very good at marketing their features as higher quality and innovative to the point that people either 1.) believe Apple did everything first or 2.) Apple didn’t do it first, but they did it better than the ones who did it first
Still, the fact that the USSR was the first to send a person to space, and the first Asian, African, and Hispanic astronauts were communists is inspiring. Hoping China does similar projects with other communist countries
It always comes across to me as maximum cope when Americans brag about "winning the space race". I mean, even if it was true, the US's economy was massively wealthier than the USSR's. This "race" was literally between the wealthiest country on earth and a very poor country. Even at the height of the USSR, its GDP was only about half that of the US's.
It really does not show the US's "strength" to brag so much about winning against someone with so much less resources. It's a sign of weakness to actually even be in a "race" with a developing country to begin with, which suggests they are actually competitive and have a chance of winning.
That's really what the whole "space race" shows. It does not matter who "won", the very fact a poor developing nation could compete with the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth in the first place demonstrates the extraordinary weakness of the capitalist system.
The US only placed a man on the moon because of NASA, which they founded as a direct response to the Soviets launching Sputnik. Meaning, the US literally only implemented this space program as a response to the Soviets, they were not a natural outgrowth of the US's system and would not have happened without the Soviets (as we have seen NASA massively defunded ever since). The fact the US even got on the moon in the first place only happened because of the USSR.
That was back in 1969, and we're now in 2022 yet, funnily enough, the capitalist private sector has not got a man that far yet.
by aimixin
The USSR took over a literal feudal autocracy and started the space race inside of a generation, after getting more than half their productive capacity wiped after two world wars. Not even comparable
In defense of the indefensible, the burgerreich also did the first orbital rendezvous.
It's bonkers to me that Americans can triumphantly sound the air horns over a competition with a country that was a semi-feudal, wartorn husk 50 years prior, which would then go on suffer the most death and destruction in the bloodiest war in history, without realizing what a massive self-own it is that there was even a competition in the first place.
I mean, not really since Western libs live in a land of idealism and rainbows but it's almost kind of impressive how long it holds.
