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Comment by aloe_falsa | Hacker News Reader

> Only four nations have successfully landed on the moon, the U.S., Russia, China and India.

Correction: the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, and India.

Yes. Luna 9 was designed by a Ukranian[1] and launched from Kazakhstan[2]. Calling it a "Russian" accomplishment is pretty silly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9

To be fair the design wasn't a one man job, and the company is located near Moscow, and Baikonur is an enclave administered by Russia.

I'm not saying Russia was a bit player, just that it's wrong to credit the landing to Russia.

That we can agree on in general, although you can't enter the same river twice.

That is such a hardcore burn. Yikes haha

Only until recently the Russians were our only ride to the ISS. The US didn't even have a shuttle program...

The US itself still doesn't have a working program, thankfully SpaceX can do it.

The Russians could probably go to the moon again, but there's no real point to.

Russia has tried to go to the moon (Luna 25) like a month ago. It failed.

1. The SpaceX Commercial Crew Program was intentionally the US's plan. That was the expectation of the program (Not that the Boeing side of it looks good to anybody) 2. Russia, just last month, flubbed a rover a couple feet deep into the surface of the moon...so, no if they wanted to, apparently they could not.

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