You DO recall that they did beat us into space, right ?

Yep

It’s the Russians political system telling them how things should be done that keeps them behind in many areas.

And it was the US political system telling us how to do things that allowed them to beat us into space. Rather than use those nasty militaristic Army employed Germans,like von Braun, who actually had some experience with big rockets, we gave the job to NASA's predecessor, NACA with funding via the National Science Foundation.

Project Vanguard, the NACA/NSF program, was a disaster. Five days after getting the go ahead to use an Army missile instead, Explorer one went into orbit on a Jupiter C, a version of the Redstone, both products of the von Braun group.

Vanguard 1. (Video Here

Explorer 1 Launch on Jupiter C.

:)

“And it was the US political system telling us how to do things that allowed them to beat us into space. “

well, von Braun’s object might have been to get into space, but I’m sure he was directed here, same as in Germany to figure out how to drop things a long distance away. At the time, dropping things was much more important then orbiting a tape recorder.

When we decided that orbit was important, we did good at it, just like they did.

You have to give credit where it is due, considering their country WAS invaded and bombed to pieces not so many years before.

We screw up when we underestimate people - That’s why so much in the world now has a Toyota or Samsung label on it.