The Russians started off very successfully but why did they lose? They had achieved many "firsts" such as the first artificial satellite in orbit, the first man in space, the first space walk, and the first woman in space. Perhaps, when the Russian space programs were integrated into a secretive military-industrial bureaucracy, little people outside (people not involved with the space programs) could help improve the space programs because launches weren't announced in advance and only the successful ones were made known. Perhaps, some civilians could have had answers to the problems with some of the unsuccessful launches. Therefore, if the Russian space programs were more openly shared with the people, they may benefit from the people. For the United States, they chose to keep all of the military space programs secretly, but they publicized all of the civilian space programs. This was especially true for the race to the moon because they were open for the world to see. One aspect we liked about the American space program was it focused mainly on the race to the moon while the Russians didn't do much to try to improve their mission to the moon. The American manned missions such as Mercury and Gemini aided the Apollo missions greatly by helping the Americans to develop hardware and they improved spacecraft control, astronaut movement in space, and piloting the spacecraft. We believe that this was probably the major reason for the Americans beating the Russians to land a man on the moon.