This whole post seems like bait for drawing out nationalists.

It utterly ignores the vast, vast spectrum of space exploration and discoveries that many other nations have contributed, as well as the US's ongoing progress towards a permanent space presence after the USSR collapsed. And all it, from the advancements of Russia in the 60's and 70's up through today to India and China and ESA exploring our solar system as the US collapses er, scales back from the frontier of science and exploration. It's all worth celebrating and being glad happened in our lives so we get to see amazing sights and learn amazing things about our local space neighborhood.

If you take pride in shit you didn't personally do and feel others are inferior for not achieving your own measure of success, you're setting yourself up for being a mindless chud and girls will never touch your weewee.

Both the US and Russia have spent my entire life cooperating on the most ambitious space endeavor the planet has (the ISS), why are we trying to create some kind of ideological wedge between the two countries on the one issue we seem to agree on? Don't we have enough of those?

Oh this stupid discussion that we have like every 3 years

Here some other memes from the last time this came up:

We absolutely saw those photos in school in the US… maybe this person just didn’t pay attention?

I hate to be that guy, but the first space rocket was one of the V2 test vehicles in 1944. It made it to an altitude of 176km Wich is most definitely in space.

having a cow on every square inch of your body

I get where they're coming from

I went to a space cadet camp at the Kennedy Space Centre. Considering I'm not American, Florida was a bit of a change for me

It was really odd how much they glossed over how they managed to do things, and instead focused on what they did instead

One good example of this was when the USA made these new engines for a rocket, and they tried to really underline how much of a scientific breakthrough they were, all while never actually saying what they did differently. Similarly, every time they brought up Russia it was always about how they were a step behind, slapping on a bunch of rockets to compensate for the fact that they had worse machinery

Of course, they never brought up how Russia was basically in front for the entire race until the US moved the goalposts, as shown in this meme

So yeah that's my experience on how this is taught in America

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if both countries prioritized space exploration instead of wholesale slaughter?

Not a historian, but folks on The Internet have characterized the Soviet program as a series of milestones, with the US program a series of stepping stones in support of a single goal.

This makes sense with the cartoon, where the Soviets were first in basically everything except walking on the moon.

Not sure how much merit it has, but it's kinda interesting.

Good call getting past "first dog" quickly, lest we dwell on it too much.

If you cannot read it, open in browser. It is your app.

The people who do this cool shit are scientists and Cosmonauts who genuinely want to learn and explore. The fact that they did it under communism is irrelevant.

I like.this but I always get bothered by the pressure analogies. You wouldnt feel a cow crushing every inch nope.

Not a space people, but wouldn't it have made more sense to build a satellite to study mercury rather than kamikaze-ing rover after rover?

Edit: Fuck I'm dumb.