Let’s not forget they managed to match the Americans in the space race even though their space budget was so small they were using cardboard boxes as office furniture.
The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.
Let’s not forget they managed to match the Americans in the space race even though their space budget was so small they were using cardboard boxes as office furniture.
I don’t remember the USSR making it to the moon first.
The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
Yet they still lost the space race.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.
Do you remember them making it to space first?
I remember them sending a dog to starve to death in space
And I remember decades of American crews arriving at the ISS in vehicles labelled ‘Soyuz’.
ISS was pretty far along. Let’s talk Skylab and Space Shuttle.