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?

Question

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?

In: 14546

Answer 1

The two countries had different strengths. (ELI5). The US probably always had the lead in terms of the computation and communications end of things, essentially better electronics (simply because most of it was invented in the US). The USSR was pretty good at rocketry and airplanes (although the US was no slouch).

Getting something into orbit is primarily about having a big enough rocket if you didn’t really care much about how long that thing had to stay in orbit. This is oversimplifying things of course.

Getting something to the moon, though, has a great deal more to do with the controls, communications and computation.