>>10730201>they never have, and never will.From the instigation of Project Mercury, when US manned space capabilities surpassed those of the Soviets, the only other country in space, through the end of Project Apollo, when both countries were focused on reaching the moon first for propaganda purposes, and which only one of the two ever did, the US clearly was the dominant nation in manned spaceflight. Soviet fanbois can argue that the USSR dominated unmanned exploration during that time period, and at least there is an argument to be made there.
Post Apollo, and once the remaining Apollo spacecraft were used for Skylab and the ASTP diplomacy flight, the US manned effort was sunk into the ship-to-nowhere shuttles while the Soviets (and then the post-Soviet Russians) continued to develop their Soyuz craft, and learned huge amounts about prolonged spaceflight with their space station work. We tend to remember Mir as sort of a "hermits in space" joke, but the fact that they could work problems in orbit that increasingly beset the aging station, so far past it's sell-by date, is a testament to their increased skills at space operations. The Shuttle gets a worse rap than it really deserves (yes, it was an expensive way to do anything in space, it was plagued by compromises forced on the design by repeated Proxmiring of the budget, and should never have been allowed to become, and then remain, the US's only launch vehicle) but it DID allow the US to gain experience in on-orbit constrctn & repairs and some long-term flight studies, to keep them in the same game as the Russians, if arguably running hard to stay in second place.
During that same period, the US clearly took the lead in unmanned space exploration.
And, of course, during this period new players got into the space game, none of which have yet matched US or Russian capabilities but several of which are closing the gap, if they can stay the course and don't decide to drop out and spend money elsewhere.
