Space Propaganda

The billionaires' space race between Elon Musk of Tesla, Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, is part of the push of privatizing space travel and space tourism, expanding capitalism beyond Earth's atmosphere. But I briefly want to talk about that other space race; the one between America and the U.S.S.R.

The original space race was between the world's superpowers of the time. The term "superpower" was first used during the Second World War and was applied to the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain. The British Empire dissolved during the Cold War, leaving only two superpowers compete with each other ideologically, politically, militarily, and economically. This clash of titans has been won by the United States and its allies around the world, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

That's part of why we all believe that America has also won the space race. I mean, America did land the first man on the moon, and I don't see a trio of Russian or Chinese billionaires fighting each other for a share in the space travel industry. So, it's clear: America won the space race. Or did they..? Well, actually they didn't. The fact that most people believe they did is yet another example of how powerful effective propaganda can be. People also believe that America basically defeated Nazi Germany and won the Second World War. But they didn't; the Nazis were defeated by the Russians on the eastern front. Roughly 8.6 million Soviet soldiers died in the course of that war to accomplish that. And, fun fact, the scientists who supposedly won the space race for America were Nazis they brought over under Operation Paperclip.

The Soviets won the space race, overwhelmingly. Here's a list of what they achieved before America did: 1) first artificial satellite, 2) first living creature to orbit the planet, 3) first flyby of the Moon, 4) first spacecraft to photograph the far side of the moon, 5) first man in space, 6) first woman in space, 7) first team in space, 8) first space mission without space suits, 9) first space walk, 10) first space craft to land on the moon, 11) first spacecraft to land on another planet, 12) first space station, 13) first spacecraft to land on Mars. That's impressive. But hey, America landed the first man on the moon, and that first landing is ingrained in our collective psyche. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are names we all know, as well as those famous words spoken by Armstrong; "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

America couldn't, and still can not afford to lose the battle of ideas, can not allow any alternative ideology take hold, and that's why the propaganda around the capitalist status quo has been and still is so strong. The space race was much more about that battle of ideologies than a race of technological and scientific achievement, which is why we all know about that one American achievement and know almost nothing about all the steps they lost to their ideological adversaries. Watch the below linked video...

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