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Comment by wesselbindt | Hacker News Reader

America won the space race? The only milestone where the US got there first was having boots on the moon. Every other milestone (first artificial satellite, first organism in space, first man in space, first woman, first spacewalk, first craft on the moon) was achieved by the soviets first. Taking the one arbitrary milestone where the US did come in first and declare it the finish line feels weird as heck.

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Well, because obviously the finish line of the space race was the Moon.

Had the Soviets declared the line on the "first woman in space", now we probably would use Soviet GPS, we would use Soviet maps of planet surfaces, we would have Soviet Mars rovers, Soviet Voyager... You get the idea.

> Well, because obviously the finish line of the space race was the Moon.

So, this choice is not super obvious to me. If it was called the moon race or whatever, I'd get it. But in this case it just feels like making up rules after the fact to make sure you "win".

EDIT: I just realized you might be saying this sarcastically. I'm really bad at picking up on that sort of stuff, and apologize if that's the case.

it got silly when you wrote "first woman"

Why?

My point is that the "space race" didn't really have a finish line, and despite early Soviet successes, the Americans ultimately took the lead. Because they sustained that momentum continuing to explore deep space, putting people on the Moon, and achieving all kinds of successes while the Soviets stalled and scrapped their programs, it's commonly understood (in the West, anyway, as Moon landing denialism is surprisingly rampant elsewhere) that the Americans won the race.

No need to apologize. In any case, I should apologize for hiding my point behind sarcasm.

It is sore loser behaviour. Combined with typical fascist totalitarian terrorist state mind washing of the population it does stick. Repeat lies enough time and people actually start believing them instead of the naked truth.

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