Why did the USA win the moon race?

The space race was really about who had the better industrial model. The Soviets started their missile program in the late 1940's. They developed a really great space rocket (still being used today), but it took them a long time to do it. We didn't get going until the mid 1950's and were embarrassed when the Soviets used their rocket to launch satellites and then men into space. But hey, they got a ten year head start!

The Soviets didn't have anything big enough to launch men to the moon. Neither did we. What Kennedy did was to say that we could design the equipment, spacecraft and rockets to get to the moon - from scratch - before they could. Part of it was the money we could throw at the problem, but they did too. The real advantage was we had an integrated program focused from the start with each step building on the last, while the Soviet model was more focused on proving to the world how great they were with ever flashier political space stunts. They wasted a lot of time and money on these stunts instead of trying to learn something new with each flight, even if it wasn't flashy.

Another model we clung to was to encourage the best and brightest to design and build our tools, while the Soviets relied on one master designer, Korolev, to drive their entire program. When Korolev died in a launch accident their was no one to take his place. Instead, design tasks were handed out as political rewards to loyal engineers. This lead to largely directionless programs and poorly designed vehicles. They designed and built a rocket larger than the Saturn V, but it blew up during all three of its launch attempts. If they'd given up on the "space-spectaculars" and had focused on learning how to launch and support comprehensive rendezvous and docking missions, as well as assigning design tasks according to skill instead of political favors they might have won.

The US had a market economy, which was much more efficient than the Soviet command economy. We created synergies with technology and space race. For the Soviets, new rockets did not translate into better radios like in the US. This made the space race for the Soviets much more expensive than for the US.

The US also had twice the GNP of the Soviet Union, and was able to out spend the soviets without crimping the economy. The Soviets gave up the race when it became too expensive.

In a way: sheer luck. But luck always comes from hard work. The USA invested much more in their space program - if only because they could afford it. That investment paid off.

But luck also played a role: the US program had major problems when it began (Apollo fire), the USSR program got major problems later on, because they tried to cut the corners.

The USSR even considered sending a kamikaze to the moon, if that was possible. They knew they couldn't put a man on the moon and safely return him back to earth, so they considered sending one to the moon and leave him there. Luckily for that volunteer even that wasn't possible.

So they changed their tune completely and pretended they never wanted to do a manned flight to the moon anyway.

We landed on the moon first. After world war 2 the US allowed a lot of german scientists to come work for them.

We had Oppenheimer. And his buddies.