Promises of material wealth and resources created an economic and political incentive
>transatlantic
Extremely cheap - and having been demonstrated as possible encouraged many fame seekers or flight enthusiasts to recreate the feat
>Nukes
Obvious reasons - not to lose geopolitical leverage
>satellites
Both in development at the same time. Also there is a real technological benefit in the ability to launch controlled orbital antennas which was obvious even to lowly radio engineers
The obvious answer as to why no one ever did it the second time is that it was never done the first time and that space is, in fact, fake. For the sake of argument (assuming space is real) it would probably be too costly for any other nation for no material/tangible benefit. USSR surely could have done it, but the risk of losing the crew and experiencing bad PR probably outweighed the potential benefit of being the first loser. Even a perfect series of missions wouldn’t have helped them with the very serious problems they were dealing with on the ground. They knew they could get their precious space rocks cheaply and with less risk just by waiting a while. China (more specifically the CCP), on the other hand, could very seriously use a moon landing right about now.
Promises of material wealth and resources created an economic and political incentive
>transatlantic
Extremely cheap - and having been demonstrated as possible encouraged many fame seekers or flight enthusiasts to recreate the feat
>Nukes
Obvious reasons - not to lose geopolitical leverage
>satellites
Both in development at the same time. Also there is a real technological benefit in the ability to launch controlled orbital antennas which was obvious even to lowly radio engineers
The obvious answer as to why no one ever did it the second time is that it was never done the first time and that space is, in fact, fake. For the sake of argument (assuming space is real) it would probably be too costly for any other nation for no material/tangible benefit. USSR surely could have done it, but the risk of losing the crew and experiencing bad PR probably outweighed the potential benefit of being the first loser. Even a perfect series of missions wouldn’t have helped them with the very serious problems they were dealing with on the ground. They knew they could get their precious space rocks cheaply and with less risk just by waiting a while. China (more specifically the CCP), on the other hand, could very seriously use a moon landing right about now.