Was it actually the Russians who won the space race?
I recently watched a BBC4 television documentary on the space race between the USSR and the USA which so captivated my teenage years. It presented a different angle, arguing that in effect it was the Russians (since the the Soviets are now history) who have won the space race.
All the early space achievements were achieved by the USSR – as I have lasted in this book review – before the Americans caught up and totally dominated the effort to put a man on the moon. But, in retrospect, what does having put a few men on the moon mean? Nobody has been to the moon in decades and nobody is planning to do so.
Instead the world’s space programme now revolves around an International Space Station based on the technology developed by the USSR with its Mir space station and the Russians are currently the only ones with a rocket capable of sending people to that space station.