What was the point of the Space race?

What was the point of the Space race?

To decide which planet is the fastest.

>Who has the biggest dick?

Sadly the Soviet Union won on all accounts like mass, speed, and girth, and the only thing the US can be proud of is that it can shoot the farthest

To develop the technology necessary for accurate ballistic missiles and demonstrate their accuracy to your enemy in a public show of power. In order to give reason for the massive budget required and encourage support by scientists you tell everyone that it is actually a quest for scientific achievement rather than military advancement.

The American penis also lasted longer

To keep the moon from falling to communism.

this.
Russia was a premature ejaculator

Read a book.

The soviets scored early triumphs due to having more powerful boosters than the US -- US missile development after WWII was half-assed at best. So the Soviets were able to loft larger Sputnik and Vostok a month or two before the US lofted smaller Explorer and Mercury. The Russians also scored some impressive feats in unmanned exploration.

They then began to fall behind as US booster tech caught up, and passed, what the Soviets could do -- the Soviet attempt to match Saturn series boosters was a total disaster, with the N-1 blowing up repeatedly before being abandoned. (In contrast, none of the three Saturn boosters -- 1, 1-B or V, ever had a catastrophic failure in flight.) They diverted resources from R&D to political side shows, like "Look, we beat you to a multi-man capsule! Do not notice that we did it by using a one man capsule and taking out the safety equipment and cramming three men in like cord-wood for a very short flight." Or, "We beat you to rendezvous in orbit! Please do not notice that neither craft involved could change orbital parameters, we basically just aimed them to pass near each other in ballistic flight, and pretended the a three-mile approach was a meaningful rendezvous."

In the last months of the Space Race, the Soviets tried and failed to get the N-1 flying, tried and failed to at least send a manned Soyuz-modification around the moon so they could claim to get there first and claim that landing was not needed, and even tried to send an unmanned sample-return lander to land while Apollo 11 was in flight, and try to return the first lunar soil sample to Earth ahead of the Americans.

That is not to take anything away from what the DID accomplish -- especially when Korolev was allowed to do meaningful work and not waste his energies on grandstanding. And since the "Golden Age" space race ended, they got their shit back together and made Soyuz into a fine spacecraft, and did amazing things in Earth orbit.

>you tell everyone that it is actually a quest for scientific achievement rather than military advancement.

Projects can have more than one intended benefit.

In any case the Saturn V had virtually zero military applications -- soemthing that had to be rolled out a week in advance and required teams of controllers and technicians to make flight ready, was not military useful -- a handful of much smaller rockets would suit the military much better. Military uses of manned spaceflight never amounted to much, either. The USAF man in space program was abandoned before launching anybody, while the Soviets lofted a few military Salyut stations for reconnaissance, they soon found that unmanned spy satellites got them more bang for the buck.

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