Eh - I don’t think it was about capitalist superiority. But American superiority. The whole point of NASA was to make it a civilian exercise vs a military one, but the bill was footed by the governement. Though make no mistake in both cases it was to showboat ICBM capabilities.
I am actually a fairly big fan of the Soviet program as they ended up doing more with less in many cases, but they were able to keep their pace partly due to lower safety thresholds. Still, while a lot of their tech was cruder, it was also simpler and more robust. They had different problems and thus different solutions, which lead to different innovations.
Still, while they had some initial victories, they sort of fell down short of crossing the finish line. Though once we stopped “racing” I have been impressed with their Mir station. While I loved the Shuttles, the whole concept was flawed to begin with, while Russia’s Soyuz really haven’t changed much in function since the 70s or so.
I am not sure Korolev surviving would have mattered or not, as their “keep strapping V2s together to get more lift” I think has a lower ceiling vs building larger actual engines. Getting all of them to work in unison may not have ever worked reliably. The Lunakhod missions were awesome, though.
