>>14408960The actual answer is that once America did it first, they decided that never would be better than second place, and then started to focus on space stations. The whole space race was all about Firsts (the USSR racked up plenty of those, of course) and if you ain't First, you're Last. The USA was willing to press on and take second place in most categories until they took first in the category which was unironically more impressive than all the preceding ones put together.
Thank god the N1 rocket failed or we would never have heard the end of it.
