soviet union: goes from peasant farmers to catching up to the USA economically and scientifically in about 30 years

USA: "communism has failed"

china: goes from peasant farmers to beating the USA in about 50 years

USA: "communism has failed"

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.

Good point. As much as I've been shitting on NASA today, I'd rather we went back to that style of space exploration rather that whatever the fuck Space X is doing right now.

The James Webb telescope is particularly awesome, as is the Juno probe.

And I'll never forget seeing those images of Pluto for the first time. New Horizons was amazing.

I'd really love for humanity to send another probe to Neptune, it's barely been studied compared to the others (I think)

whitey on the moon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4

Yea like Soviets never denied Americans didn't go to moon like the conspiracists do.

aimixin on the space race

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.

It was a genuine achievement for humankind; viewing it in competitive terms just obscures that.

Comrades don't want to hear this but it's true 😤

Sure it's an incredible and equally ridiculous achievement (look up Apollo in realtime) but there's also a reason we haven't put a human farther out than low earth orbit.

Also everyone who cares about doing it again or putting humans on any other planet within our lifetimes is no better than any facist.