If you haven't been following space updates closely, the US is _already_ in a race with China, especially in regards to the Artemis (moon) missions. That being said it's mostly being used as an excuse to keep SLS alive and prop up the legacy space contractors... It's hard to lose a contest you won 60 years prior...
> It's hard to lose a contest you won 60 years prior...
If you pick a random person off the street and ask them who discovered the Americas will they answer 1. Leif Erikson, 2. Indigenous peoples or 3. Christopher Columbus? If you ask people who invented the smartphone will they say Apple or some other company?
It’s absolutely possible to lose a race you had previously won.
Or indeed, ask them who won the space race, because by most measures, that was the Soviets too.
Soviets achieved:
- First artificial Orbit ( Sputnik )
- First animal to orbit ( Laika )
- First Man to orbit ( Yuri Gagarin )
- First Woman to orbit (Valentina Tereshkova )
- First EVA ( Alexei Leonov )
- First moon landing ( Luna 9 )
- First landing on another planet ( Venera 8 )
Many of these years before the USA achieved the equivalent. The first female US astronaut wasn't until the mid 1980's.
The Americans were at one point beat so bad that they invented their own game that only they were playing.
Yes, that spurred their entire economy and the boosted scientific investment paved the way for the decades of dominance since, and that should be rightly celebrated, but the idea that the USA "Won the space race" because of the moon landing is Hollywood nonsense.
They are still jerking on these 50+ years old achievements, without having new ones. "Space race" didn't stop after Venera landing, and soviets/russians are thing of the past now. Aside of useless ISS trips, they have no relevance in space anymore.
> "Won the space race" because of the moon landing is Hollywood nonsense.
"Won the space race" because they were first at the very beginning is a nonsense too. Following this logic, China won rocket race because they invented first rockets centuries ago.
What use is the stuff that went on 60 years in the past when most people involved with it are dead and a lot of the knowledge has been lost in the meantime?
I remember picking through an aerospace scrapyard in North Hollywood a decade ago with extremely-talented launch engineers (and entrepreneurs). The aim was to look at parts, measure them and figure out why they were built like they were. We looked, a little, at stuff like nozzles. But mostly we focussed on bolts, joiners, turbine blades and the like.
