Russia lags far behind the US in producing spaceships for some decades. There are other things necessary for the society to build and maintain companies capable of going to the stars.

Starting 14 years ago, Russia had crewed spaceflight capability, and the US didn't; that situation persisted until less than 5 years ago (Crew Dragon Demo-2). There are other things necessary, but Russia wasn't "lagging", except in the sense that they hadn't backslid as quickly as the US. They are now, of course.

I think the US has learned from others without saying a word about it. e.g. the N1 had a lot of smaller engines rather than a few huge ones - so they could be mass-produced. They were also pretty efficient. They lacked the control systems we have now so the N1 was problematic but it was a clever idea.

Those Russian engines were so good that the US has bought a lot of them and used them many years after they were made.

Certain American manufacturers have ..... been making smaller engines that they can mass produce and have gone taken the efficiency approach a step further.

> e.g. the N1 had a lot of smaller engines rather than a few huge ones - so they could be mass-produced.

American Saturn-1 had 8 H-1 engines on the first stage - Wernher von Braun wasn't against putting a bunch of existing engines when he hadn't have a bigger one.

> They were also pretty efficient.

It's pretty impressive SpaceX made full-flow combustion engine to work. Does it improve things enough to justify the complex development? I'm not sure - the Isp isn't that great comparing with even some kerosene engines, and oxygen-rich turbopumps would deliver similar results with less complex development program. On the other hand Raptors are perhaps a good deal in a long term.

Well, exactly. I don't know if the complexity was worth it or not because I'm not an expert.

For comparison there were apparently 30 NK-15 engines on the first stage of the N1. (from Wikipedia of course)

What I did read somewhere was that they had a production line and they filmed it all so they could see what happened to any engine during production and go back to the recordings if something went wrong with it.

I'm not a Russophile at all, but I suspect that there were clever people who solved problems and others quietly took note of it.

Soyuz spacecraft was technologically simpler - yet safer - than Space Shuttle. It can be argued that US had technically superior, but safety-wise inferior access to space capability until 2011, when the last Space Shuttle flight happened, then US had zero crewed spaceflight capability until 2020, and after that US again had technically superior access to space capability.

Russia in contrast didn't develop its crewed spaceflight capability, it uses the technology left from the USSR. Russia maintains that technology, but progress with the improvements is rather slow. So Russia wasn't lagging in a sense of having - and using - a technology, but definitely was and is lagging in a sense of developing a new technology.

As we see, the lagging of US - in a sense of having and using a technology - was for 9 years, and lagging of Russia - in a sense of having and using technology - for now is about 5 years.

In a sense of developing new crewed space technology Russia is lagging roughly since the dissolution of the USSR, so 30+ years. There were quite a few attempts - again, in crewed space technology - but little results.

I disagree that the Space Shuttle was technically superior. It was more complex, more expensive, and less safe; in my book all three of those are forms of technical inferiority. The Space Shuttle program was already a significant regression from the capabilities of Apollo. Yes, it's true that Russia wasn't making much progress on improvements on Soyuz, but neither was the US; instead they were backsliding faster than Russia was.

I think we can date the US's crewed-spaceflight inferiority to Russia to roughly 01972, when Apollo ended; Russia had launched the first space station the year before, and though the US would briefly operate Skylab in 01973–4, but would not catch up to the Russians again in crewed spaceflight until 02020. The Space Shuttle boondoggle made it possible for sufficiently motivated people to deny this until 02011.

Yes, the Shuttle was more complex, expensive and dangerous than Soyuz, and yes, those are forms of technical inferiority.

But the Shuttle was capable of solo flights for couple of weeks without adverse effects of Soyuz - that is, Shuttle was bigger, and that's useful.

Shuttle brought the bigger crew - more than twice bigger, so there could be better specialization and division of labor, and even the amount of tasks done per unit of time.

Shuttle brought significant payload capability - so the crew could make final preparations before the payload would be launched. Similarly Shuttle can "dock" to Hubble to service it. Or crew could work on orbit in SpaceLab which Shuttle carried to orbit and back. Those are advantages.

Shuttle was more gentle in landing - of course, when things went well. Landing on the strip without passing significant acceleration moments before that - that's another advantage.

I don't think SU and Russia had technical superiority over US - except admittedly safety of the Shuttle, and except those periods when US hadn't have the capability at all. Safety is a big item, so Russia can claim superiority for this reason, and also for simplicity and cheapness, but better US solutions - e.g. with Crew Dragon - suggest it's normal that flying to space better - for many reasons, some of which are shown above - may be either more expensive or will require significant changes, like e.g. modern America companies are pushing.

Now Russia doesn't have much of superiority left, and little capabilities to attain it, or at least it seems so. It's arguably better to have the ability to develop to the needed level, than just to carefully preserve achievements of the past.