For All Mankind

[mme]

Looks like we have a winner.

Hopefully the rating is good enough such that it continues for a while, I want to see Sea Dragon! 

They've already started production on season 2 so there's hope!

‘For All Mankind’ Drama Renewed For Season 2 By Apple

Ahead of For All Mankind’s series debut on Nov. 1 and premiere event tonight, the space race alt-history drama from Ron Moore has been renewed for a second season, which quietly started production within the past week or so, I have learned. Apple declined comment.

It is part of a strategy by Apple to get second seasons of most of its scripted series going ahead of lunch, which helps amortize costs and keep the Apple TV+ pipeline of original content going, avoiding lengthy hiatuses.

[dglow]

Ron Moore is reported to have a seven-season arc sketched out.

[hektor]

Right now we have done 1969-1971 after 4 episodes. 7 seasons makes 70 episodes. That could lead us well into the 2000s.

[dglow]

Yes, supposedly his alternate history will reach and surpass present time.

[Orbiter]

Let's hope we get some alternative Shuttle program history!

[raketa]

steel space shuttle with ceramic heat shield and reusable first stage with horizontal take off and landing.

[dglow]

...and they have a plan.

[hektor]

Let's hope we get some alternative Shuttle program history!

Of they go like Voyage. No Shuttle. Saturn N, Nerva engine, the Von Braun 1969 plan...

[TrevorMonty]

Watched upto episode 4 (free if you know where to look), great story.

[sanman]

This show seems to be quite a rollicking ride on an alternate historical timeline, with both real and apocryphal characters. It loses distinction between being a space sci-fi drama with political elements versus a political drama with space sci-fi elements.

While they play up certain political, social and cultural issues of the 1970s Apollo era as part of the story drama, I kind of wish they'd have done that primarily through the apocryphal characters without taking as many liberties with portrayal the real world historical figures. In my opinion, real world historical icons should be treated more gingerly/tastefully, including to avoid ruffling an audience fanbase who naturally hold those figures in high esteem for their real-world accomplishments.

[spoilers]

The idea of Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins wanting to kill himself over the loss of his cewmates the Eagle LEM made him look silly and immature.

The show treads into Music Box territory when taking up the WW2-related history of Dr Werner Von Braun, Apollo's chief scientist and architect of the Saturn-V. While that history has been the subject of real-world debate, I don't know if the show should have put its own words so clearly into his mouth while dramatizing a sensitive topic. At least he wasn't a cardboard "steely-eyed missile-man"

As a political figure, US President Nixon may be fair game as the deus ex machina to explain the various interesting story turns, or else otherwise there'd be no story here. Hopefully they won't go too Oliver Stone on him. In this timeline, he seems to be getting the Vietnam conflict ended sooner, which presumably makes possible a peace dividend to fund all this extra spaceflight.

No Skylab - and no Apollo 13 mishap either. So do we get to see Lovell, Haise, Swigert in this series, perhaps in later seasons?

They neatly gave us Alexei Leonov as the first man on the Moon, so they should have given us Valentina Tereshkova as the first woman, instead of the apocryphal Anastasia whatshername.
Hopefully we'll see more of the Russians. I'd like to see more character development to flesh them out too. You can't have a full-blown Cold War Space Race while only seeing half of it.

On the other hand, the info on IMDB says that won't happen - at least not in this season:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

[/spoilers]


The guy who played Neil Armstrong didn't seem enough like Neil Armstrong, and seemed to be playing a generic cocky astronaut.

The actor who plays NASA Crew Director Deke Slayton reminds me a little of the guy who plays the Dad on "The 70s Show" - somehow I feel like that's why they cast him. ;p

I think I would've liked to see Von Braun go into his book, "The Mars Project" which may have actually provided motivation to a new generation of spacefaring leaders in our own real world today.

[sanman]

Just saw episode 5 and I find the character of Wayne Cobb, husband of Apollo's first female astronaut Molly Cobb, to be hilarious. He's like a cat deliberately thrown among the pigeons in relation to the Stepford-like wives of the other astronauts. The fact that he looks like Rob Reiner's "meathead" son-in-law character from All In the Family can't be a coincidence.

This again makes it hard to tell whether Moore's show is meant more as a socio-political commentary making use of space sci-fi elements, rather than as a space sci-fi drama with socio-political commentary included.

I know it's just sci-fi, but I want to know if it was realistic to
[spoilers]divert Apollo 15 to the Shackleton crater on the fly like that. How much authority does the mission commander have?

convert the lunar buggy into a winch

discover water ice embedded inside the walls of the Shackleton crater. Shouldn't the ice be on the crater floor?
Shouldn't Cobb have frozen to death in the cold trap of the shadowed crater?

modify Skylab into a lunar surface station module and land it at Shackleton's rim within 2 years
(hopefully it came with its own winch)
[/spoilers]

[Orbiter]

Got to admit seeing an EVA into Shackleton crater during Apollo 15 would have been an incredible thing to see.

[hektor]

Operational Constraints on Landing Sites

Why didn't Apollo land on the Lunar poles?

[Markstark]

I’m really really enjoying this show. I think the could end it right at episode 5 and it would be cool mini series. I wonder what they have in stores for the remaining half of the season. 

[hektor]

Well Apollo 18, Apollo 21 and Apollo 25 get a passing reference. We might see these.

[Orbiter]

Operational Constraints on Landing Sites

Why didn't Apollo land on the Lunar poles?

The stackexchange comment is incorrect, missions after Apollo 11 were not on a free return trajectory. That's why Aquarius had to do a DPS burn after the accident to get 13 back on a free-return trajectory. Hadley, for example, was 26 degrees off a free-return inclination.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Interesting thread on historical plausibility

twitter.com/djsnm/status/1195228916933251072

Episode 5 of For All Mankind has just been released, lots of changes to Apollo 15, new fancy computer & somehow it's in a polar orbit, so it can land at Shackleton crater.
Mare Frigoris is supposed to be original target, they must have orbited moon for a week first.

https://twitter.com/djsnm/status/1195240857508597760

I guess I want to ask @astro_g_dogg if he figured out how much they'd need to upgrade the Saturn V to put Apollo 15 into the required orbit around the Moon. And of course, whether they're still using Saturn V's for Jamestown.
(also, why are 1970's Astronauts using metric?)

twitter.com/astro_g_dogg/status/1195786900809736192

Apollo 15 was to perform a spectroscopy mapping mission prior to landing at Mare Frigoris. They would fly a polar LLO for a few days before executing the DOI burn for Frigoris. Delta-V required for polar LLO is not much greater than equatorial so Saturn V should be ok. 1/2

https://twitter.com/astro_g_dogg/status/1195787907748921345

Then, all that would be required to land at Shackleton would be some additional phasing and a different set of DOI burn parameters since Shackleton is already under their LLO ground track.  As for metric units, we assume we evolve more quickly in our @forallmankind_ universe. 2/2

https://twitter.com/astro_g_dogg/status/1195788934866862080

Also - it all happens off-camera, but Jamestown arrives autonomously via Saturn V with nothing above the S-IVB other than the base under a large fairing.  The base would have to be flown stripped-down and outfitted by later missions to meet mass requirements. @forallmankind_

[Oli]

Show is getting good.

[Tobias_Corbett]

(I don't know how many people reading this thread haven't seen the show, but there are some minor spoilers ahead for the first few episodes) I'm thoroughly enjoying the show so far, although there are some things I wish they would have gone more in-depth in.

Firstly, I'm quite confused about what's happened to Alan Shepard in this universe. In the first episode, in the first episode, Deke mentions says something along the lines of "If Al were here he would be frakked" or something like that. That means in this universe he had either left NASA by 1969 or had died by 1969. At first I though that he may have died in the Apollo 1 fire instead of Gus Grissom, although later in that episode its confirmed the Apollo 1 crew were the same as in our universe, so I don't really know what to think about that one.

Secondly, I'm a bit disappointed there was no mention of the Apollo 13 near disaster. I know it doesn't have much to do with the general story, but I can't see any reason why the service module wouldn't suffer the same failure in this universe as it did in our universe, and I think it would be rather interesting to see how nearly losing three astronauts would affect NASA and the Apollo program in this post-Soviet Moon landing universe.

[sanman]

(I don't know how many people reading this thread haven't seen the show, but there are some minor spoilers ahead for the first few episodes) I'm thoroughly enjoying the show so far, although there are some things I wish they would have gone more in-depth in.

Firstly, I'm quite confused about what's happened to Alan Shepard in this universe. In the first episode, in the first episode, Deke mentions says something along the lines of "If Al were here he would be frakked" or something like that. That means in this universe he had either left NASA by 1969 or had died by 1969. At first I though that he may have died in the Apollo 1 fire instead of Gus Grissom, although later in that episode its confirmed the Apollo 1 crew were the same as in our universe, so I don't really know what to think about that one.

Secondly, I'm a bit disappointed there was no mention of the Apollo 13 near disaster. I know it doesn't have much to do with the general story, but I can't see any reason why the service module wouldn't suffer the same failure in this universe as it did in our universe, and I think it would be rather interesting to see how nearly losing three astronauts would affect NASA and the Apollo program in this post-Soviet Moon landing universe.

As the story picks up immediately prior to Apollo 11 whereupon the timeline immediately begins to deviate from reality, apparently there is no Apollo 13 mishap - at least not one that gets mentioned. But we do get treated to seeing Gene Kranz as a major supporting character, which is way cool. (I wonder if they have to take permission from the real life person in order to portray him fictionally onscreen?)

If you check the cast credits, you can glean who's going to be more recurrent on the show:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
Note that actors/characters are listed in order of amount of episodes they appear in.
[spoiler]There's more Buzz than Neil[/spoiler]


Season 2 of the show has been approved for production:
https://www.space.com/for-all-mankind-apple-tv-season-2.html