For All Mankind

[TimothyC]

AppleTV trailer is up:

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm surprised no-one else has talked about this. From Wikipedia:

For All Mankind is an American science fiction streaming television series created and written by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi and produced for Apple TV+. The series dramatizes an alternate history depicting "what would have happened if the global space race had never ended" after the Soviet Union succeeds in the first crewed Moon landing ahead of the United States.

The series stars Joel Kinnaman in the lead role as fictionalized NASA astronaut Edward Baldwin, with Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, and Wrenn Schmidt in other starring roles. The series features historical figures including Apollo 11 crewmembers Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, Richard Nixon, and Ted Kennedy (who in the series' alternate timeline became president after Nixon). Seth Gordon directed the first two episodes of season 1.

For All Mankind premiered on November 1, 2019, and was renewed by Apple TV+ in October 2019 for a second season, which premiered on February 19, 2021. In December 2020, ahead of the second season premiere, the series was renewed for a third season.

Yes, that Ronald D. Moore. I've been watching it with my Dad, this is one of those series I'm really geeking out over, especially when you see how much manned space travel has developed over the twenty-year timespan depicted so far, to the point that by the eighties NASA has a far more advanced manned space program than they do today. As in, they actually built the Sea Dragon:

[chimericoncogene]

It's very much soft sci-fi at this point. The nuclear-powered (but somehow air-launched) SSTO is really pushing it.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It's very much soft sci-fi at this point. The nuclear-powered (but somehow air-launched) SSTO is really pushing it.

The realism has been eroded over the course of the second season, that's for sure.

You can tell they did that for dramatic effect by making it look like it was going to be launched vertically before rotating the camera, the idea that it would stay airborne instead of immediately sinking like a stone with its relatively small wingspan before the engine ignited was ridiculous, at least it wasn't the disaster that a similar scene from Man of Steel became.

And the matter of the space shuttle going to the moon. The Buran making the trip was handwaved by having it take on fuel from a hiterto-unmentioned Soviet space station in a manner not unlike Armageddon, though only taking place on an onscreen graphic presumably to save the VFX budget and to keep its appearance a surprise. No such explanation for the shuttle.

Final episode tomorrow, we'll see how Jamestown reacts to half a dozen AK-toting cosmonauts breaking in and causing havoc.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Double post edit.

[Zor]

I rather like this series.

Zor

[Agent Fisher]

Sure, it's a little odd to see Shuttles making Lunar trips, without the shuttle looking different than OTL. But over all, enjoyable show, fun seeing a NASA basically given a runaway military budget so we get moon base, skylab, and multiple shuttles. Along with DoD running shuttles out of Vandenberg.

[Bedlam]

Does the setting have anything missing that we developed in real life?

Something like we spent all this money on space technology so we never put resources towards the internet or medical science or something?

There are always spin off technologies and some non directly space based fields would be ahead of what we currently have but it seems a bit false to say if we pushed huge levels of resources to space flight the world would be exactly as it is just with better space flight.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Pathfinder's launch:

My inner scientist hated their failing to specify units when they said altitude of 25,000 and speed 270. For altitude it can be inferred they meant feet owing to the C5 launch aircraft having a maximum altitude of 41,000 ft (12,000 m). For comparison, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft had an altitude ceiling of 15,000 feet (4,600 m) and a maximum cruise speed of Mach 0.6 (400 knots) with the orbiter attached. Air-launch-to-orbit however takes place at anywhere between 35,000 and 40,000 feet. Speed could either be knots or km/h- the C5 has a cruise speed of 450 kn (520 mph, 830 km/h) / M0.77.

Interestingly, Lockheed proposed a twin body C-5 as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft to counter the Conroy Virtus, but the design was turned down in favour of the Boeing 747.

I'm not sure about other tech advancing, it's an alternate history with things like the Chappaquiddick incident never happening and Ted Kennedy becoming president, other presidencies like Nixon and Reagan happened as they actually did, and John Lennon wasn't shot in New York meaning he continued his peace activism.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well, we've had the finale, they did a Cuban Missile Crisis IN SPACE, complete with an X-Men First Class-style resolution by Pathfinder shooting down Sea Dragon rather than letting the Russians do it, even when they had two of the crew members pointing pistols at each other. The battle in Jamestown ended with a bit of an anticlimax since it ended up in a stalemate, with them only taking out a single cosmonaut in exchange for one of their marines. The gun battle had stray AK bullets damaging the nuclear reactor cooling system resulting in 2 characters killed switching to backups to prevent a meltdown.

As with the end of last season they did another time skip, to 1995 with them setting foot on Mars which is an order of magnitude farther away than the moon is. Word of God they're planning 7 seasons in total, assuming they continue the pattern season 3 is the 90s, 4 will be the 00s, 5 the 10s, 6 the 20s which will bring them to the present day in 2024, meaning season 7 could be set in the future. We can only speculate what they'll be doing by then if we're going to have (manned) exploration of Mercury/Venus, mining the asteroid belt, exploring the outer solar system perhaps culminating in exploration of the Kuiper belt and eventually (assuming further leaps in propulsion technology) the Oort cloud.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Being set in 1995, season 3 will reveal whether the Soviet Union broke up like it did in 1988-91, broke up at a different time, or only partially/didn't break up at all.

[Solauren]

Part of the reason the USSR collapses was the price of trying to keep up with NATO military. Simply put, they couldn't afford it.

Combine that with the influx of Western culture, and migration issues....

I'd be disappointed if they said the USSR didn't collapse without a very good explanation.

[Elheru Aran]

Well if the US is throwing wads of money at their space program to get to the point of taking people to Mars...

(note, I have not seen the show, but just contributing to the discussion or attempting to)

Perhaps they didn't spend nearly as much on the military in this timeline, more or less building it up and then resting on their nuclear laurels and hoping the Soviets do the same?

[Agent Fisher]

Maybe, but the US Air Force is running their own shuttles out of Vandenburg on the west coast, as well as getting into a regional dust up in Panama, so I'm sure they're throwing money too.

[Bedlam]

Maybe, but the US Air Force is running their own shuttles out of Vandenburg on the west coast, as well as getting into a regional dust up in Panama, so I'm sure they're throwing money too.

Which raises my point above, if in this universe resources are being spent on space travel well above the real world and on the military equal to the real world where are they not being spent?

[TrekkieJeff2000]

I really like the concept behind this show.

[Zor]

Watching this series with a friend, getting into season 2, we both really like it.

Zor

[Zor]

Season 3 is also excellent. The Mars race is fun and they managed to integrated the humor.

Looking forward to Season 4 and this worlds 00s

Zor

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Season 4 was cool, basically the USSR is still intact and with the moon providing a source of Helium 3 resulting in a boom of clean energy. This has resulted in a lot of oil workers suddenly being out of a job- some went to Mars only to find out that the working conditions suck.

It was claimed earlier in the series that it would take 40 years for the mining operation to pay for itself if it took place in orbit of Mars instead of Earth, they seem to be doing a 8-9 year time skip between seasons, 4 ended with a time skip to 2012 with a full-fledged asteroid mining operation in orbit of Mars going on.

I hope they don't go down the route of Mars wanting independence, they'd be ripping off The Expanse if they did that.

[B5B7]

Does the setting have anything missing that we developed in real life?

Something like we spent all this money on space technology so we never put resources towards the internet or medical science or something?

There are always spin off technologies and some non directly space based fields would be ahead of what we currently have but it seems a bit false to say if we pushed huge levels of resources to space flight the world would be exactly as it is just with better space flight.

The amount of wealth in the world is staggering. The decisions to spend money on something are not economic, but political and commercial.
There are other nations beside the USA who also do medical research, and the internet is basically a product of corporations.
Also, there has been massive reductions in corporate taxes over the past five decades that make any amount spent on space program puny in comparison. Also wars are expensive for the USA government, but profitable for corporations. So if in the alternate timeline USA is involved in less wars, then the savings for the government are humungous.

[TrekkieJeff2000]

Does the setting have anything missing that we developed in real life?

Something like we spent all this money on space technology so we never put resources towards the internet or medical science or something?

There are always spin off technologies and some non directly space based fields would be ahead of what we currently have but it seems a bit false to say if we pushed huge levels of resources to space flight the world would be exactly as it is just with better space flight.

The amount of wealth in the world is staggering. The decisions to spend money on something are not economic, but political and commercial.
There are other nations beside the USA who also do medical research, and the internet is basically a product of corporations.
Also, there has been massive reductions in corporate taxes over the past five decades that make any amount spent on space program puny in comparison. Also wars are expensive for the USA government, but profitable for corporations. So if in the alternate timeline USA is involved in less wars, then the savings for the government are humungous.

I tend to agree. I like in the show how instead of the major nations (in this case USSR and USA) push their resources towards space flight as an alternative to war. Wouldn’t bettering science make so much more sense?

In the show they also have kept the hero worship for the astronauts, something we lost after the Apollo missions. Where the average family knows their names.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If memory serves, wasn't it mentioned in either Season 2 or 3 that NASA kept the patents for the cool stuff it invented, thus becoming self-financing?

[WillDexter]

If memory serves, wasn't it mentioned in either Season 2 or 3 that NASA kept the patents for the cool stuff it invented, thus becoming self-financing?

I believe so. Still, the flers will bitch aboutFAM NASA stealing taxpayer's money to make "CGI cartoons."

[EnterpriseSovereign]

If you recall they were saying that if the asteroid ended up in Earth orbit, financial interest in Mars would dry up because this particular asteroid contained a lot of iridium and would pay for itself decades faster than it would if it was in Mars orbit. The possibility of finding life on Mars alone wouldn't be enough to continue financing a Martian base for a purely research mission.

It was interesting how they portrayed alternate!North Korea as gradually becoming less xenophobic than actual!North Korea, even if you ignore the issues of how they were able to send a (presumably) one-way manned mission to the red planet without anybody else noticing. Until their capsule was found because the Americans & Russians were looking for spare parts.