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You're reading history in reverse. The Soviets landed a robotic probe on the moon years before the USA succeeded with human pilots,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9 ("Luna 9")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon#M... ("List of missions to the Moon—Mission milestone by country")

You absolutely don't need sophisticated technology or giant budgets to accomplish this.

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Except, Luna 9 was soft landing attempt no. 12 - the point is the humans pulled it off on landing attempt no. 1.

Counter point: first unmanned US soft landing attempt succeeded 3 years before first manned attempt. Surveyor 1 - 1966 Apollo 11 - 1969. I bet that NASA learned a lot from 7 unmanned Surveyor missions and that contributed to the success of Apollo 11.

Luna 9 used an airbag system, not a soft landing system.

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