I must not have been clear when I said that space race "had nothing to do with politics or procedure."  What I ment by that was that the US didn't win solely because they had a better political system or because they had better prodecures within NASA (some feel that the Soviet Space Program didn't hold safety as a high concern-they did but for perhaps a slightly different reason).  The space race happened because for national defense reasons, there was fear that whoever controled space could drop weapons on the other from space (an early fear).  But, there were many military reasons to be interested in being first and the best in space.  So, Hagar-you are 100% correct and I agree with you.

But, I was refering to why the Russian's jumped out to an early lead (Sputnik, Vostok, and Voskhod) and why the Anerican's made a comeback and before to long greatly passed the Russian's in the so-called "space race."  During WWII, the German's had made amazing advancements in rocketry due to the work of Werner von Braun and this team (V1, V2 and simular type rockets).  Following the war, von Braun and his team made an effort to be captured by the American's (or British-basically anyone not Russian for fear of what would happen to them).  They ended up with the Americans.  But, all their developmental labs and test ranges (with lots of test rockets) were captured by the Russians.  So, the American's had the great rocket minds and the Russian's had the great rockets.  Since the Russians could basically copy these designs and make changes they thought were important, they were ahead in the space race before it even got off the ground.  Their rockets that were used in the Sputnik, Vostok, and Voskhod programs (where all their early accomplishments were) had to do with launch vehicles based heavily on these designs.  As it became neccessary to have bigger and stronger rockets (where they simply couldn't increase the size of these designs anymore) their program greatly slowed because they had to go and design a larger rocket from scratch.  This is where they basically stop making space accomplishments (during the space race).  If you look at history, the one last things (and the last in a long list of constant Soviet space race "victories") that you will see the Russian's did during the space race was the first space walk performed by Alexei Leonov in March of 1965-this was the final mission of the Voskhod program.  On the other hand, the US had the scientists (von Braun and his team) but didn't have the great German rockets.  So, the US had to use their rockets early in the program (this caused the slow start) but the German team set to work designing the Saturn rockets and making modifications to the American ones.  Sp, this caused the American space program to have a slow start but once it got going it moved very fast.  This allowed the US to catch the Russian's and easly pass them.

So, the space race happened for very polotical and military reasons.  But, it was not won based on those reasons.  German influcence greatly helped both sides, but in the end-the American's won because they aquired the great German rocket scientists. 

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Actually, there is quite an interesting story about that.  Originally the first shuttle was to be named "Constitution."  But, there was a huge nation wide write in campaign to change the name to "Enterprise."  The interesting thing is what "Enterprise" it is named after.  It is named after the Star Ship Enterprise from Star Trek.  It is the only shuttle not to be named solely after a real exploration ship.  You can read about that here: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/enterprise.html

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I'm sorry to hear that Doug, I was kind of hopeing for a response.  I love to debate history with people.