>>12839030It was a dick measuring contest between the US and the USSR. The USSR won in primacy and quantity, the US won in quality. Both countries spent an enormous amount of money on their space programs (the US spent 5% of it's GDP on NASA during the Apollo program. It only spends 0.5% today). Both countries' programs started as extensions of developing ICBM's. The Moon landing was the most Cold War thing you can imagine and the reason why we don't have them anymore is surprise-surprise the Cold War was over 30 years ago.
>inb4 muh Chinathe Chinese space program is still in its infancy. ESA and even JAXA has better infrastructure. Moreover, nations can't impress people with a space program today as in the 50s when that stuff was just pioneered. Today we have SpaceX and BlueOrigin, and spaceflight has become a common occurrence.
