I've never seen a more accurate application of this meme, honestly. The amount of grandstanding by the US on one achievement out of a hundred is impressive.
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.
Look, this is just cope. Once both nations had icbms, the space race was a propaganda and national prestige thing. The fact that most people say amerikkka won the space race means they did.