we like to make fun of the american space program because they were behind in a bunch of milestones, but damn, landing on the moon is pretty fuckin good IMO.
like I don't really think of it as an american victory over the Soviets, but as a general human accomplishment, landing on the moon is pretty much one of the best we got.
Soviet accomplishments in space stations are probably as important or more important but damn, humans landed on the fuckin moon. holy shit!
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)
there was a lot of cooperation between the USSR and the us in the late 70s and 80s with shuttles actually docking with the soviet space stations too. incredible stuff. It makes sense that American obstinance and the fall of the USSR diminished these accomplishments but holy shit.
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.
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.