this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Capitalism didn’t get us to the moon. Capitalism got us space debris.
Fun fact, the Soviets were the real space pioneers. They pretty much were first at everything except the moon landing.
I can back this up with a list from one of Carl Sagan's books if there are sceptics out there.
In my view, the Soviets won the Space Race, as they got most successes. The Americans may have their credit with the moon landing.
I mean sure, you can win every race if you call it when you're in the lead 🤦
@Bigfishbest@lemmy.world
@birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Watch For All Mankind, amazing alt-universe stuff.
Actually winner of the Space Race goes to
North Korea... lmfaoNorth Korea, Best Korea /joke
They won the race to the moon but never finished.
I mean, thats correct, but they were never able to make a rocket big enough for the moon landing. They got stuck with their absurdly gigantic ships and the US overtook them.
But they did. The N1 was just as powerful as the saturn V. But they struggled getting the engines stable enough to fly. And there was a lot of poltical infighting to ever get it fully operation. And then the US beat them to the moon, destroying the last poltical will.
If they couldn't get the engines stable enough to fly, did they really make a moon rocket? They certainly built a really big rocket shaped building filled with rocket fuel.
It's like saying SpaceX Starship is an orbital vehicle. Sure, it would be if it does it, but if SpaceX were to abandon the project before it achieved orbit then they can't claim they made the biggest orbital vehicle.
The N1 was absolutely not as capable as the Saturn 5. N1 was only capable of 95 tons to low earth orbit and 33 tons to trans trans lunar injection, compared to the Saturn 5 being capable of 140 tons in to low earth orbit and 43.5 tons to trans lunar injection.
The N1 had a lot of technical limitations in its design. The tanks were much heavier per volume of fuel carried. The computers were bulky and comparatively primitive. And while the staged combustion NK engines were technically impressive in their own right, their specific impulse paled in comparison to the hydrolox J-2s, and the fact that only 5 F-1s were needed just made it fundamentally more reliable than the NK-15 which couldn’t be tested because of their single use valves.
They never carried humans to the moon because they didn't think it was worth it to risk a human life for it. However, they were the first to send satellites to the moon, scan the surface, take pictures of the far end of the moon, land on it, and send a rover to it. In fact, they sent multiple rovers to the moon, and they were not so dissimilar to our current rovers on mars.
... and some vaporized astronauts.
Mostly space debris. Also we got a bunch of tech along the way. GPS and cellular among a few.
Also CCD's!
solar panels are a big one
I mean if socialism is celebrated for the other space achievements then seems as sensible to celebrate capitalism for the moon
The competition between the communist USSR and the capitalist USA is what got us there that fast. Seeing how most capitalists seem to have a burning hatred for fundamental research, and the space race wasn't directly profitable, I'm not sure capitalism alone would have got us there even by now.
Corporations benefit from research, including space research. I bet we'd achieved moon landing with or without either ideology, just with slower pace. But in this case it's capitalists only who got to the moon.
Insomuch as America was (is?) nominally a capitalistic country. But seeing as the space race was funded with taxpayer dollars, and not private corporations seeking a return on their investments, doesn’t really feel right ascribing the success of the space race to “capitalism.”
Capitalist countries have government involved in the economy. Nothing specific about capitalism or socialism got any of those achievements anyway, but if one is congratulated for the achievements you have to do the other too. Personally I'd just say it was the countries involved and not the ideologies who achieved those things.
They sure do. Just like they, and society as a whole, benefit from fundamental research in general. But since the end goal of fundamental research is "only" knowledge, they never want to properly fund it (and usually cry about their taxes funding it too).
Scientists got to the moon. Capitalism simply had a massive incentive to make their scientists achieve it first at the time and actually gave them the required level of funding to achieve it.
I'm fine with not ascribing that achievement to either economic model or ideology. It happened within those systems but mostly just as a way for the two countries to compete. If it was two socialist states or two capitalist states that had a heated rivalry you might see the exact same thing.
It's kinda hard to give credit to capitalism for that when it couldn't have happened without heavy government involvement.
Private sector was heavily involved in it. It feels like we're going to strange lenghts to dedicate achievements to one system and to deny them from the other. Capitalist US got to the moon, socialist USSR did other amazing space achievements. If anything to me it seems like neither should get the credit. Give it to the countries who made them happen and the people behind the projects instead of economic systems.
I mean, the private sector was by needs involved, because a space program requires industrial supply chains, and those were mostly private. They never would have achieved it without collective, government action. (Even SpaceX only exists because of NASA.) Saying that "capitalism did it," when it manifestly did not, because of oversimplifications like "capitalist US" is misleading. At best, capitalist in that use is synecdoche. At worst, it's political woo woo, since the US is far from pure capitalism.
In capitalism those supply chains are most often filled by private sector. Government still does stuff in most capitalist systems and is involved in the economy. It's not not capitalism when the government does stuff.
This is an interesting reversal of how this discussion usually goes. But there's no "pure capitalism". Capitalism is a massive spectrum.
Yeah, I agree with this take honestly.
If you credit solely Capitalism for getting to the moon, then you have to solely credit socialism for getting to space.
And it's not like getting to space was some feature of either system, rather just result of US and USSR having a massive rivalry about it. You could've had that between two capitalist or socialist countries with the same result.
Capitalism got humankind to the moon. But communism (or whatever you'd call the actual political/economic system of the USSR) got them to the first animal in orbit, the first human in space and in orbit, the first satellite in orbit.
The political/economic system doesn't matter so much, as long as a lot of other things have been done/invented first. Once those initial conditions are met, the country trying for those space-related firsts has to be rich enough to have a large group of people they can recruit into the effort, and an even larger group of people they can tax to pay for the effort.