we like to make fun of the american space program because they were behind in a bunch of milestones, but damn, landing on the moon is pretty fuckin good IMO.
like I don’t really think of it as an american victory over the Soviets, but as a general human accomplishment, landing on the moon is pretty much one of the best we got.
Soviet accomplishments in space stations are probably as important or more important but damn, humans landed on the fuckin moon. holy shit!
soviet union: goes from peasant farmers to catching up to the USA economically and scientifically in about 30 years
USA: “communism has failed”
china: goes from peasant farmers to beating the USA in about 50 years
USA: “communism has failed”
Don’t forget the time a bunch of rice farmers won a war against the best armed military in the world
Vietnam: has the US attack and invade it, Vietnam wins, then years later a bunch of veterans move to Vietnam because they can’t afford the US
USA: “communism has failed”
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I don’t like calling it a “human” achievement.
If it had been the Nazis who made it there, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to say the same. It’s the same with the US doing it for me, if maybe slightly less disgusting. It feels like humanity is doomed to remember it this way: the ones who slaughtered and enslaved their way into global domination were rewarded with the moon.
There is also the context of it that I can’t abstract away. It was clearly a political and military move as much as, as well as, or moreso than a scientific one, and one designed to justify capitalism over socialism. It’s like congratulating Christopher Columbus for finding the Americas, the British for conquering half the world, or some other superlative divorced from the motives and tragedy that allowed or followed it.
Also I’m just a sucker for the smaller victories that get ignored. Like how the enslaved young Edmond Albius domesticated vanilla for the first time by hand pollinating it. He changed the world and performed a human first in history, but this achievement is not glorified as much.
Good point. As much as I’ve been shitting on NASA today, I’d rather we went back to that style of space exploration rather that whatever the fuck Space X is doing right now.
The James Webb telescope is particularly awesome, as is the Juno probe.
And I’ll never forget seeing those images of Pluto for the first time. New Horizons was amazing.
I’d really love for humanity to send another probe to Neptune, it’s barely been studied compared to the others (I think)
there was a lot of cooperation between the USSR and the us in the late 70s and 80s with shuttles actually docking with the soviet space stations too. incredible stuff. It makes sense that American obstinance and the fall of the USSR diminished these accomplishments but holy shit.
Thats amazing.
What we can achieve when humanity works as one is inspiring.
whitey on the moon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Yea like Soviets never denied Americans didn’t go to moon like the conspiracists do.
aimixin on the space race
It always comes across to me as maximum cope when Americans brag about “winning the space race”. I mean, even if it was true, the US’s economy was massively wealthier than the USSR’s. This “race” was literally between the wealthiest country on earth and a very poor country. Even at the height of the USSR, its GDP was only about half that of the US’s.
It really does not show the US’s “strength” to brag so much about winning against someone with so much less resources. It’s a sign of weakness to actually even be in a “race” with a developing country to begin with, which suggests they are actually competitive and have a chance of winning.
That’s really what the whole “space race” shows. It does not matter who “won”, the very fact a poor developing nation could compete with the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth in the first place demonstrates the extraordinary weakness of the capitalist system.
The US only placed a man on the moon because of NASA, which they founded as a direct response to the Soviets launching Sputnik. Meaning, the US literally only implemented this space program as a response to the Soviets, they were not a natural outgrowth of the US’s system and would not have happened without the Soviets (as we have seen NASA massively defunded ever since). The fact the US even got on the moon in the first place only happened because of the USSR.
That was back in 1969, and we’re now in 2022 yet, funnily enough, the capitalist private sector has not got a man that far yet.
Honestly I think they’re only doing this new corporate space race because China is picking up where the USSR left off
It was a genuine achievement for humankind; viewing it in competitive terms just obscures that.
I get way more upset when people deny the moon landings over any other conspiracy theories honestly. probably the greatest and most improbable achievementt our species will ever make before we bomb each other into oblivion on a planet we made uninhabitable through war and climate change. we did one amazing thing and people want to pretend it didn’t happen.
fr fr on God no cap
Comrades don’t want to hear this but it’s true 😤
It’s socialism because the government did it. I don’t know why people would try to deny that.
they literally walked on it and even drove a little buggy, goddamn, wow
smh goddamn yankees bringing CARS to the moon
should’ve been a TRAIN
The 4th landing included educational stuff like filming dropping a hammer and a feather at the same time
They also did important boirgoisie things there like playing golf
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Sure it’s an incredible and equally ridiculous achievement (look up Apollo in realtime) but there’s also a reason we haven’t put a human farther out than low earth orbit.
Also everyone who cares about doing it again or putting humans on any other planet within our lifetimes is no better than any facist.
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