Eli5: why was the US the first to make it to the moon despite the USSR being first in nearly everything else in the Space Race?
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A lot of answers here already but I’m not seeing a few important points I think so here goes.
Many of the initial Soviet successes were enabled by the fact that their first ICBM, the R7, was simply so large. The earliest Soviet warheads were very heavy, so up front they began with a massive rocket to carry them. The earliest American ICBMs were far smaller, as the nuclear program was further along, and the warheads much lighter. Everything up through voskhod fit in lightly modified R7s. Us went through redstones, atlas, and titan boosters in that time, all while developing the Saturn in the background. The Soviets got started a bit late by comparison on their moon rocket, with serious development in the N1 only beginning in 1965. Then in 1966, they lost Korolev. He was like their von Braun, Chris Kraft and James Webb all in one, and his death severely derailed their entire space program.
Another overall factor is disunity in the Soviet scientific community. The various design bureaus are all competitive, and trying to sabotage each other. In particular, Korolev had a very understandable beef with Glushko, for having denounced him and landed him in a gulag for years. This is thought to have contributed to his early death as well. Besides that though both Glushko and Chelomei had totally different moon programs in mind, and they never got all 3 to cooperate effectively. Nasa and its contractors were much more united and cooperative around the development of Apollo.
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