#But multiple points on that list have reasonable asterixes attached too

[maeamian]

It’s because the capacity to land on the moon covers every other capacity on that list and every other capacity on that list does not give Russia a single moon landing, there’s a much more nuanced history of the space race to be had but “Russia was the best” is just as bad a take as “USA was the best”

#I might do a long post about it later #But like #The Saturn V being successful was a more impressive achievement than the N1 not being successful IDK what to tell you #The moon landing represented USA getting ahead after being beaten to several key milestones #But Russians are almost certainly better at space stations which is why the ISS core is essentially a Salyut #There's a reason that the moon landing wasn't a joint exercise but was followed by Apollo Soyuez and the ISS #As well as IIRC the americans contributing a module to Mir? #But certainly given that a human moon landing was a stated goal that both programs worked towards #It's reasonable to compare #Early russian advances did get ahead of US advances #The Volstok orbiter was way more impressive than the Mercury suborbital capsule #But given that they were both working towards achieving a moon landing and only one did #It's not unfair to claim that the US won that one #Even if stopping progess at any given point to evaluate it isn't a great model #Also not to whatever #But multiple points on that list have reasonable asterixes attached too #The first martian landing was indeed Russian but it was also an almost complete failure #Viking was the first successful mission to land on Mars even if the Russian one got to the surface earlier