Comment by chmod775

This kind of neglects the fact that "rocket science" was just "harder than thought" for american scientists. Stuff started to work when they let German scientists build it.

Which is no surprise. Germany already had dozens amateur (space) rocket clubs way back in 1930, long before people in other countries were even mostly aware of the possibilty of sending rockets way up there.

The US had some catching up to do in the science department, which they accomplished in the end, though rockets loosely based on those initial designs are still in use today.

This is different to today's fusion situation, where we don't know whether there will be any better design at all - because nobody did built something that could be adapted to fit our purpose before us.