[bruce511]

Sputnik was the first object to orbit the earth. It was the spark that lit the fire under the US space effort. It may not have been grand, but it was the first.

Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space, first to orbit the earth.

To minimize these achievements is like saying the Wright Brothers test was meaningless because it only lasted 12 seconds. In truth each "first" represents a milestone, each required substantial effort.

In more recent times Russia alone was capable of manned space flight (2011 to 2020).

To return to your question, the USSR was critical to the space race. You cannot gave a race with 1 entrant. Without USSR constantly being in the news doing things first, there would not have been a space race at all.

Indeed, by the time of JFK's speech there was not much to race for except the moon. Once the Soviets stopped the US stopped as well. It's taken the talk of a Chinese mission for the US to even bother.

Earth satellites are an enormously valuable use of space. But very unsexy. Trips to the moon have pretty much no value. But they make for good PR.

[m4rtink]

You are mixing up human space flight and going to the ISS.

Sure, for quite a while ISS depended on Russia for crew access, but China has been capable of human spaceflight since 1999, running many missions since & their own space station.

[bruce511]

Yes, indeed.