The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.
The USSR beat the US in every other stage of the space race.
First unmanned space vehicle (Sputnik), first manned space flight (Gagarin), first space walk (Alexei Leonov), first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova)… the list goes on, and I didn’t even have to look up any of this.
Yet they still lost the space race.
The space race didn’t end with the moon landings. The USSR launched the first manned space station program - which became crucial in the development of the ISS - and performed the first landings of probes on Mars and Venus. The space race effectively only ended when the Cold War ended, and I think historians could spend days arguing who actually ‘won’ it.