How come the Soviets failed to land on the Moon?

They did land on the moon several times.

First lunar probe: luna 2

First soft landing and photos of lunar surface: luna 9

First lunar soil samples returned to earth: luna 16

Why are NASA engineers incompetent as fuck?

"Muh moon landing"

Apollos 11 and 12 did it first.

America faked the moon landing in Hollywood.

The Soviets thought it was real.

The capital had just used fascism to decimate Eastern Europe and kill millions upon millions of people, leaving behind them torched earth.

They stole less Nazi scientists than the Americans.

How come the Soviets accomplished almost every other milestone in space exploration before the Americans?

Because before Sputnik the USA has no national R&D administration. After Sputnik the USA funded military research through DARPA and NASA.

This. I'd like to see America go to the moon for real for once; and actually build a base on the moon.

...

This. They have unlimited funding and can't do shit that others can.

The reason is they prioritize having feminists and dindunuffins in NASA over people that could actually get shit done.

The Soviet space program was pointless. The Salyut program led to the Mir space station and the Lunokhod programme developed the means for unmanned exploration.

can't make this up.

The Gemini and Apollo programs methodically built up the basis needed for any further manned exploration of space. Whereas the Soviets wasted time with dead ends like the Voskhod program, which crammed multiple cosmonauts into a capsule designed for one, abandoned the emergency launch escape system, and featured a highly dangerous airlock which had the sole purpose of allowing the USSR to claim the first EVA despite their lack of a cabin repressurisation ability. This meant that the next-generation Soyuz program didn't get underway until 1967. And then after that they wasted even more time and resources on a dead-end circumlunar rocket designed to pip the US to that particular first.

Too busy landing on Venus.

It wasn't a meaningful goal. They achieved those. They kicked ass, except for this one quixotic quest.

There was also the issue of returning from the Moon. Neither side could do it confidently, but the US was buck wild enough to roll the dice. We're fucking cowboys, yeeehawwww!

Pic related: Nixon's undelivered speech in case they couldn't back to Earth.

They cared enough about it to make it their top priority and to continue working on it for 5 years after NASA beat them to the post. And it what sense was it less meaningful than anything else? This is just sour grapes.

Totally false. The Soviets were consistently more daring than the Americans, e.g. going straight to orbital missions without doing suborbital ones. And the Soviets mastered the lunar lander (it was successfully tested in Earth orbit), their stumbling point was the N1. Again, this is just an ass-pull to spare Soviet blushes.

And that is meant to prove what, exactly? Of course there was a contingency plan, there always is. In the event, all 6 missions that successfully landed got home without issue. Getting home was one of the easiest parts of the mission.

Honestly, every thread here about space degenerates into people making shit up to disguise the failings of the USSR. They achieved great things on a shoestring budget, which is impressive enough, so why not stick to the facts.

Getting off the Moon was the most hypothetical, and thus unsure phase of the mission. Think about it. You can't run a simulation for that. It was the least certain part of the simulation. It was also late in the mission, thus more engineering issues could come up. Yes, the Soviets had a macabre reputation which spoke for the the inhumane flaws in their system, but these things were discovered later. The PR issue of leaving bodies on the Moon would be immediate. I'd argue, the Soviet system was more vulnerable to such a PR risk. How's Big Brother gonna deal with that? The US would be more resilient to such a loss.
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