'Winning' the Space Race

Look, I like to mock the former half-term governor of Alaska as much as anyone, but her recent comments about the "Space Race" prove the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day (if only for a few glancing nanoseconds, and it doesn't realize why it is right).

America's chest-beating about "winning" the Cold War is so profound and pointless, it makes us merrily buy into the Tom Hanks version of a heroic, patriotic victory for our side.

Folks that I ordinarily agree with have been jumping to the safe conclusion...

Yes, the Soviet Union won many of the early contests in the space race (including putting the first man in orbit, which may have been what Palin meant by "race to space"). But it was the U.S. that walked away with the biggest trophy in the space race when it put a man on the moon.

But here's another take... the Soviets jumped out to a huge lead with Sputnik and manned flight, and then they kept it.

While America chose to believe it had launched into some kind of sci-tech rodeo contest, the Soviets were actually doing science. I'll make the bold assertion that the work Soviet engineers and cosmonauts did on long-term space flight will prove far, far more useful in the long-run than the explorations by American astronauts of how far you can hit a golf-ball on the moon.

And the fact that future crews going up to the ISS will be launched from Baikonur for the foreseeable future -- not Cape Canaveral -- seems to suggest the final outcome could at best be called a draw.