Lunar war prepares and NASA is militarized in the trailer For All Mankind S2

Apple TV + released the trailer for the second season of For all mankind, his sci-fi drama about an alternative story where the space race never ended. The series was the basis for the launch of the Apple TV + in 2019 and proved popular enough with viewers to warrant a second season.

(Some spoilers from the first season below.)

The creator of the series Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) made a point of trying to keep the program reasonably close to reality, despite the science fiction concept, often referring to NASA’s original plans for guidance and incorporating archival footage throughout the season. Moore said the following during a 2019 Q&A panel after an IMAX screening of the first two S1 episodes at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC:

Our production designer, Dan Fisher, who designed all the sets for the show, recreated Mission Control in such precise detail that even the ceiling plates [are] the same as the ceiling plates in the original mission control. When we were on set, we had technical consultants and former astronauts who were really there, who would guide the cast on how to operate the command module and the lunar module. We had people talking to players in the background in Mission Control, so people weren’t just pushing buttons randomly – they knew exactly what the console was doing and who they were talking to in those headphones, and it permeated the entire production .

The first season was centered on an astronaut named Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), in place of Thomas Stafford, the commander of Apollo 10 in our real-world timeline. His opponent is astronaut Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman), the stereotyped fighter pilot and womanizer to Baldwin’s “right” personality. As Ars Tech Policy reporter Kate Cox noted in her analysis of the S1, Apollo 10 was the “dress rehearsal” for the historic Apollo 11 landing on the moon, when American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

But in this alternative timeline, the decision not to land on the Moon with Apollo 10 meant that the USSR would beat America with the punch. Instead, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made history. (The real Leonov left his own mark on our timeline: he was part of the Voskhod 2 mission and was the first man to do a 12-minute space walk on March 18, 1965.) The United States must then work to achieve it in the space race, with the aim of establishing a lunar base.

With the Soviets now world leaders in space, the United States is struggling to catch up, even recruiting a team of astronauts after the first female cosmonaut landed on the moon. Throughout the season, the two countries find water on the moon and the United States establishes the first lunar base in 1974, followed shortly thereafter by a Soviet lunar base 13 kilometers away. There was a lot of interpersonal drama on Earth and the Moon at S1, and some tragic losses. The season ended with a complicated two-part episode involving the desperate launch of Apollo 25 to conduct an Apollo 24 rescue and rescue mission. A post-credit scene in 1983 featured the launch of a large plutonium payload rocket for the American colony of Jamestown on the moon.

The second season begins in the same year. According to the official premise:

It is the height of the Cold War and tensions between the United States and the USSR are at their height. Ronald Reagan is the president and the greatest ambitions of science and space exploration risk being wasted as the US and the Soviets struggle to control resource-rich locations on the moon. The Department of Defense has moved to Mission Control, and the militarization of NASA becomes central to the stories of various characters: some struggle, some use it as an opportunity to promote their own interests, and some find themselves at the height of a conflict that can lead to nuclear war.

The trailer begins with the sinister news that the Soviets may be trying to develop a new weapon while a new class of would-be astronauts is introduced. The United States cannot let this pass, because it “would set a dangerous precedent”. In addition, this weapon would be able to launch ammunition almost anywhere on Earth, so it is a major threat to national security. As the Eurythmics play in the background, we find Pathfinder, a new, more powerful space shuttle, and it looks like Kinnaman’s Ed Baldwin will be summoned to his first mission. Will war break out on the moon, or will the United States live up to its declaration that it has come in peace, “for all mankind”?

For all mankind returns to Apple TV + on February 19, 2021.

List image by Apple TV +