One of the stories about the US that I find inspirational is how, during the space race, NASA relied on various experts from somewhat unconventional places. It's what I always think about at times like this, because it's a snippet of what I consider to be genuine greatness, amongst all the propaganda and geopolitical awfulness.

The first example is how the Apollo spacesuits were sewn by seamstresses from an underwear company. This was because they needed craftspeople skilled enough to be able to reliably cut fabric and sew seams within a margin of error of a fraction of a millimetre. Whereas in regular garment manufacturing, you can typically tear out incorrect stitches and try again, this wasn't possible for the spacesuit, so they needed to be perfect first time; many of the fabrics they were working on were so cutting edge that they needed to be locked away in a safe when not working on them. Synthetic fabrics were still fairly new, and this partly explains why an underwear manufacturer had seamstresses who were up to this challenge — the group of sewists who worked on the spacesuit were probably among the most experienced people in the world at sewing synthetic fabrics, and this experience allowed them to be an active part of the design and manufacture process for the spacesuits.

Another example from the same era is when NASA engineers were having difficulty getting the honeycomb insulating material they were using to adhere to the shuttle. This part of the program was happening near Seal Beach, in California, and when it was discovered that the local surfers were already experienced in using a material like this for their surfboards, NASA hired a bunch of the surfers to work with their engineers to figure out the problem. There's a quote I absolutely adore from Donald Binns, a Project Engineer with North American Aviation^[1]:

"[The surfers] did a great job with it. The only downside of those guys was that when the surf was up, there was a big absentee problem — they were out there doing their trick."

I just find this incredibly sweet, because it captures both the strength and the difficulty of working with diverse skill sets. If ever there was greatness to be found in the US, we can see it in stories like this. I think this spirit of innovation has been lost over the years, due to the pressures of capitalism on individuals in particular.

Edit: forgot to add link for quote citation

[1]: Quote is from episode 1 of the 2008 documentary "Moon Machines", accessible via the internet archive. Insulation section starts at around 16:45 https://archive.org/details/moon-machines/Moon+Machines+Part+1+The+Saturn+V+Rocket.mp4