Kind of a tangent, but what I find funny (but par for the course) about the “space race” is that the US just declared they won after they went on the moon. There was no agreed upon goal between anyone, so it’s was never actually a race because you can’t have a race without a pre-defined finish line, no one was even keeping score of achievements like would happen in any real contest. Nope, the US did one thing that the Soviets didn’t do and just said they won with no real regard for whether their accomplishments were more significant in the greater scheme of things, in a way not unlike a sibling rivalry or competition between elementary schoolers at recess.

Also, NASA is state funded and had a huge budget allocated to it during the Cold War, which is ironic when the US was trying to prove that capitalism can do space better.