I am not downplaying the NASA programs but the Soviets had first landing on another planet (not the moon which is a close sattelite) in 1970.
They sent digital imagery from Venus in earlier 1980s. In US you have seen other planets in Star Wars movies at the time.
They had advanced manned space stations and about ten times as many space launches manned included.
Apollo program is the very definition of the dangerous stunt. So is the space shuttle and more so. The death rate for US astronaut per flight was 100 times than that of the Soviet before NASA contracted the Russian flights.
Viking,
I appreciate your perspective, but the US had Viking taking pictures on Mars in the 70’s, too, in addition to the wonderful Star Wars movies.
You used the words “advanced” and “intensive”, which, for me, conjure up images of efforts far more massive than any of these probe missions.
For instance, I think more effort went into the US Gemini program at its time, than all Soviet space efforts up to that time. And that was just to find out that Earth Orbit Rendevous was a stupid idea that wasn’t going to work.
Apollo certainly was a “stunt” to put a man on the Moon to whack a golf ball! But, that wasn’t really the point, as the effort to accomplish that was so unbelievably huge it dwarfed all other efforts in space.
The Space Shuttle isn’t even a stunt. It was a lowering of goals by a NASA that knew that its days of unlimited funding were over.
The ISS is being supplied now by a stockpile of Cold War Soviet booster engines. Probably, this is the best use for them.
I appreciate Russian scientific achievement. It was badly abused by the Soviet government, but it helped stimulate what I am sure is going to be the greatest period of technological advancement that is going to happen in my lifetime.