just to remind the other countries who kicked their asses in the space flight competition...
They've just been talking about the moon landings on the radio here; many non-Americans who helped make it all possible thought it was supposed to be an international mission...:roll:
Besides, I think you'll find the USSR were first on almost every other milestone til then, plus a few afterwards. In fact...from Wikipedia
"The Soviet space program pioneered many aspects of space exploration:
* 1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka
* 1957: First satellite, Sputnik 1
* 1957: First animal to enter Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
* 1959: First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's orbit, Luna 1
* 1959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.
* 1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first man-made object in Solar orbit, Luna 1
* 1959: First probe to impact the Moon, Luna 2
* 1959: First images of the moon's far side, Luna 3
* 1960: First animals to safely return from Earth orbit, the dogs Belka and Strelka on Sputnik 5.
* 1960: First probe launched to Mars, Marsnik 1
* 1961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 1
* 1961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok programme
* 1961: First person to spend over a day in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (also first person to sleep in space).
* 1962: First dual manned spaceflight and approach, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4
* 1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6
* 1964: First multi-man crew (3), Voskhod 1
* 1965: First EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2
* 1965: First probe to hit another planet (Venus), Venera 3
* 1966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the moon, Luna 9
* 1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10
* 1967: First unmanned rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188. (Until 2006, this had remained the only major space achievement that the US had not duplicated.)
* 1969: First docking between two manned craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5
* 1970: First samples automatically returned to Earth from another body, Luna 16
* 1970: First robotic space rover, Lunokhod 1
* 1970: First data received from the surface of another planet (Venus), Venera 7
* 1971: First space station, Salyut 1
* 1971: First probe to orbit another planet (Mars), first probe to reach surface of Mars, Mars 2
* 1975: First probe to orbit Venus, first photos from surface of Venus, Venera 9
* 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7 space station)
* 1986: First crew to visit two separate space stations (Mir and Salyut 7)
* 1986: First permanently manned space station, Mir, which orbited the Earth from 1986 until 2001
* 1987: First crew to spend over one year in space, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on board of TM-4 - Mir"
