Not only in the United States, but all across the world, humanity celebrated 2024 as the 55th anniversary of the culmination of the Space Race: the qu

The secret reason the USA beat the USSR to the Moon

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2024-12-12 14:30:06

Not only in the United States, but all across the world, humanity celebrated 2024 as the 55th anniversary of the culmination of the Space Race: the quest to put a human being on the Moon and safely return them to Earth. On July 20, 1969, our species achieved a dream older than civilization itself, as human beings set foot on the surface of another world beyond Earth when they walked on the surface of the Moon, some 380,000 km away. From 1969 through 1972, a total of 12 American astronauts walked on the lunar surface, marking the first and only time to date that human beings have set foot on the solid surface of a world beyond our own planet.

If any nation was going to do it, most thought it was going to be the Soviet Union. The Soviets were first to every milestone in space before that:

and much more. After the disastrous Apollo 1 fire, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Soviets would be the first to walk on the Moon. Yet they never even came close. Why not? The answer lies in a name that most people have probably never heard of: Sergei Korolev. Here’s what everyone ought to know.

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