&gt; US Astronauts were very aware of the early Soviet deaths and failures and wanted nothing of them.<p>So they jumped in an overengineered spacecraft, built by bureaucrats from NASA, sometimes 8 at a time, and as a result more astronauts died.<p>The shuttle went the way of the dodo and we are using Soviet&#x27;s 70s technology to get into orbit. If anything, the history is hard to ignore. And the irony is there too, staring us it the face.<p>Also nevermind that Soviet&#x27;s Buran prototype was the first fully automated space shuttle, so again autocratic state wins? (going by your labels here...)<p>&gt; Environments built on fear perform sub-optimally.<p>History proves you wrong again. A lot of environments built on fear produced rugged dependable products.