Cloning stuff is good. Not being capable of designing and building your own is bad. It means you can never improve on what already exists.
It wasn't for lack of engineers. The Buran rocket's first and only flight took off and landed on 100% automation. That's not easy. But didn't build things in ways that could benefit people in a more widespread way.
Again, you can't expect the USSR, a nation that started industrialising and educating people in 1920s, to be able to outcompete the entire rest of the world in every sector of the economy. It was a poorer nation than the US, Germany or England historically, it developed much later. The fact that it got as far as it did is impressive enough of a feat, especially since it didn't abuse colonialism and imperialism to do so, but instead used only the sheer work of its inhabitants and the natural resources found within its borders. The USSR falling behind in some extremely novel fields such as computing, is only to be expected.
Tell me you don't understand colonialism and imperialism without telling me you don't understand colonialism and imperialism.
You haven't read a single thing about unequal exchange, or colonialism, or imperialism. The western countries (imperial core) RELY on cheap raw materials and cheap labour from third countries (colonial periphery) to be able to attain the levels of wealth and development that they enjoy. The USSR simply didn't participate in this, and you saying otherwise proves you know jackshit about this topics or about history.
Edit: just for future reference (because people who argue this shit aren't worth giving the benefit of a serious debate), I don't doubt one bit that the US benefits greatly from barbaric imperialist polices around the world both then and now. I take great issue with the idea that the USSR somehow got to space without its own barbaric imperialist policies. Just ask Poland, Finland, or Ukraine. Or any of the numerous peoples who had been forced to live under the previous Czarist regime, and whom the Bolsheviks did fuck all to help. Or Hungry or Czech, which played host to the incidents that invented the term "Tankie". Marxist–Leninism is a shitty drug.