What's with all this NASA BULL. America is not the only country in the world. I just wish you could take off your conspiracy specs for one moment....and see the truth.
I''ll try....
After WW2, both the Russians and the USA provided hospitality towards certain German scientists, who were well ahead in rocket technology, compared to their Russian and American counterparts.
Werner von Braun was given a function with NASA and he (as other rocket scientists) was merely obeying orders from Hitler & co, without being impregnated with NAZI ideology himself, because occasionally some questions about his past were asked that needed adequate responce.
Werner and a whole team of brilliant rocket scientists, contracters and engineers were able to set milestone after milestone in overall space exploration.
Because of a constant thread about a nuclear conflict ,both Russia and the USA pushed eachother to unbelievable heights.
The spacerace was ''won'' when the USA put men on the moon and safely returned them to earth while the world was watching in amazement.
Althaugh the Russians did whatever they could to be the first on the moon, America fullfilled Kennedy's legacy (before the decade is over we will visit the moon)
The Russians tracked the Apollo mission , but so did amatures....the proof was all over the place, denying was futile.....they lost....
America started a new episode with the spaceshuttle, a scientific masterpiece that could be used over and over again.
The moon wasn't particular interresting anymore, because most of it's secrets were known and documented.
The funding was severely cut, the general public lost overall interrest and therefor it could sadly happen that NASA lost many of the original blueprints and data, because even the storage of data and tapes was no longer a national priority, because of the hard financial times NASA was going through at that period.
Today the USA has to rely mostly on Russian rockets to bring a payload into earth's orbit.
The ISS was nevertheless a masterpiece of joined collaboration of the once sworn enemies and many nations have visited the ISS since then.
The black marble timelaps film (blue marble was the earth in daylight shot in 1972) was an ''ISS'' highlight,... we never saw our world in such fascinating ways.
In the meantime an unmanned American mission to mars was successfull, collected all sorts of data about the environment, history and probabilties for water / life.
With great looking pictures which provides the general public with a panorama view upon the red planet that was fantasy not so long ago.
Japenese satelites recorded the artifacts of Apollo
Chinese moonlanders had great resemblance with the original Apollo LM, ''honouring'' a design that was ahead of it's time.
We will go back to the moon before a manned mission will go to mars.
The only real problem seems to be funding, that is why the lobby in congress is very important.
But other enterprices like SpaceX and E. Musk are promising prospects when national funding would be limited in the future.
Better now ?