If they had kept going after reaching the moon, i feel like by now, we would’ve developed the technology to establish a colony on the moon. So why stop?
In: Planetary Science
To give an answer from the Soviet side. They didnt stop but also didnt care so much about the space race
The USSR never really was all that involved in the “Space Race” to the moon. Infact when Korolov, the head of the Soviet space program, heard Kennedy say that America was aiming to land on the moon he went to the head of the USSR, Khrushchev to ask for permission to race them there.
Khrushchev however refused on the grounds that it is better to eliminate homelessness in the USSR than it is to land on the moon.
It was only 2 years after Kennedy made his speech, with Khrushchev being replaced by Brezhnev, did the moon landing idea get approved.
But it was never the ultimate goal as with the American space program.
The Soviet space program had multiple goals of which landing on the moon was only one of them.
Two of the other main goals were robotic exploration of other planets and permenant human habitation in space stations.
So whilst in America they worked hard up until the moon landings and then the whole idea of space exploration dropped off, in the USSR the moon landing goal was given up since it had already been done and instead the focus was given to the other goals.
Those goals resulted in things like Salyut-1, the first Soviet Space station, starting in 1971 and running until the end of the USSR and the creation of the ISS, using primarily Soviet development of habited space stations.
Aswell as the Venera missions to land on Venus from around 1961 to 1984 and the Lunokhod missions between 1966 and 1977 to land robotic rovers on the moon which the Soviets hoped to combine to put rovers on all other planets that they could and use these rovers to create bases for human habitation. The design also helped to clear debris from Chernobyl interestingly.
Another goal they focused on was better rockets. Such as the Energia rocket. Which was designed to eventually be fully reusable rocket way before Space-x even existed
So in summary. The USSR didnt care about the space race as much as America did. For them it was just one of many goals they had. So when the Americans landed on the moon they just continued on with their other goals instead and made a lot of development in these areas. For America they gave up caring so much after the space race but in the USSR this idea of space exploration stayed strong right up until the collapse.
The source for this if you want something to read is “Rockets and People” It is a book based on the memoirs of a Soviet rocket scientist that was then translated to English by NASA and shows the inner workings of the Soviet space program.
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