[djokkataja]

The space race was to the death. Both sides thought that losing meant they'd get nuked or taken over by the other. A narrative like that for Mars is harder. "We'll take over the red planet and come back and take over the earth! . . . Someday!"

For better or for worse, the equivalent race right now is in AI.

[rsynnott]

> The space race was to the death. Both sides thought that losing meant they'd get nuked or taken over by the other.

... Eh? No they didn't, certainly not by the time people were looking at the moon. By then the nuclear doctrine was very well established. The space race was primarily about _prestige_; it was a propaganda thing. That's why it was dropped so completely once the arbitrary goal was reached; little technology from the Soviet programme and virtually none from the US one were used after both countries reoriented around lower-cost space programmes.

[JohnBooty]

In hindsight, the moon race was pretty close to pure propaganda.

I'm not entirely sure they knew it at the time, though. It was likely a bit of a land grab as well?

The moon is potentially a treasure trove. Bringing anything back to Earth is obviously the challenge because of the energy expenditure but in the 50s and 60s they were considering nuclear-powered craft (Project Orion) and at the time, mining the moon probably seemed like it might have been feasible in the next 50 years.

    little technology from the Soviet programme and virtually 
    none from the US one were used after both countries 
    reoriented around lower-cost space programmes.

Is this really true? We stopped putting people on the moon, but we certainly kept putting things into space (military and otherwise) and was much of that know-how not directly informed by the technology developed for Apollo? Building life support systems, the rockets themselves, etc.

I'm open to correction/clarification; I'm not an expert obviously.

[rsynnott]

> but we certainly kept putting things into space (military and otherwise) and was much of that know-how not directly informed by the technology developed for Apollo? Building life support systems, the rockets themselves, etc.

It was _informed_ by it, but, for instance the Saturn V's kerosene and hydrogen engines, developed at absolutely horrendous, unthinkable expense, on the justification that it was the moon race and that the cost would be amortised over expected hundreds or thousands of Saturn launches in the future, were thrown away (reusing the hydrogen one occasionally comes up as an idea, but has gone nowhere so far).

Same for the Soviet stuff, to a large extent; the N-1's engines, also very sophisticated, were essentially abandoned (though a derivative was used a long, long time later in a Soyuz launcher). The Soviets did at least keep the Soyuz orbital vehicle (originally developed for their moon programme), but little else.

This all made sense at the time; there suddenly wasn't much money, so reverting to the less capable, less complex, arguably by then previous-gen launchers was rational. But it was really a demonstration that, by then, neither state took any of this at all seriously (even before Apollo 11, the Soviets had all but abandoned their programme); if it had really been seen as a matter of national security, the Saturn C-5N and N1F and all the rest of the planned evolutions would have launched in their hundreds.

[JohnBooty]

Thanks for the additional knowledge! I really appreciate it.