Seriously though - there was never any official/legitimate/specific "space race". Both countries celebrated their own successes as propaganda victories at the time. Then afterwards the US declared the moon to have been the goal and declared itself the winner in its own textbooks.
The USSR did shutter its own moon landing program after the US did it because the cost of doing it didn't justify itself - doing it second wasn't worth it and it was risky and expensive. So by that point the US had caught up and outpaced the USSR. But the idea that the moon landing was the ultimate achievement or that everyone agreed the US had "won" is post-hoc propaganda.
There was a legitimate race for each of these achievements (except maybe Sputnik since the USSR caught them off guard) and for anything that could be spun as a propaganda victory. Americans think it was all about the moon landing because we only acknowledge the one that we won.
This is kinda dumb. There was a legitimate "space race" between the two powers to specifically land a manned spacecraft on the moon.
...Did an American tell you that?
Seriously though - there was never any official/legitimate/specific "space race". Both countries celebrated their own successes as propaganda victories at the time. Then afterwards the US declared the moon to have been the goal and declared itself the winner in its own textbooks.
The USSR did shutter its own moon landing program after the US did it because the cost of doing it didn't justify itself - doing it second wasn't worth it and it was risky and expensive. So by that point the US had caught up and outpaced the USSR. But the idea that the moon landing was the ultimate achievement or that everyone agreed the US had "won" is post-hoc propaganda.
bad move on their part tbh, the 'muricans are always saying they're the only country to have landed on the moon.
There was a legitimate race for each of these achievements (except maybe Sputnik since the USSR caught them off guard) and for anything that could be spun as a propaganda victory. Americans think it was all about the moon landing because we only acknowledge the one that we won.
Not true