Lunar war is brewing, NASA is militarizing in For All Mankind S2 trailer

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

(Some spoilers for the first season below.)

Creator of the Ronald D. Moore series (Battlestar Galactica) made a point of trying to keep the show reasonably close to reality, despite the sci-fi concept, often consulting original NASA blueprints 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 detail so precise that even the ceiling tiles [are] the same as the ceiling tiles in the original mission control. When we were on the set, we had technical consultants and former astronauts who were actually there, explaining how to operate the command module and the lunar module. We had people talking to background players about Mission Control, so people weren’t just pushing random buttons – they knew exactly what the console was doing and who they were talking to on those headsets, and it permeated the whole production.

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

But in this alternate timeline, the decision not to land on the moon with Apollo 10 meant the USSR beat America with its fists. Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made history instead. (The real Leonov made his own mark in our timeline: he was part of Mission Voskhod 2, and was the first man to perform a 12-minute spacewalk on March 18, 1965.) The United States must then work to catch up. space race, in order to establish a lunar base.

With the Soviets now the world leaders in space, America is struggling to catch up, even recruiting a team of astronauts after the first cosmonaut lands on the moon. During the season, both countries found water on the moon, and America set up the first moon base in 1974, followed shortly after by a Soviet moon base eight miles away. There was a lot of interpersonal drama on both Earth and the Moon in S1, and some tragic losses. The season ended with a complex two-part episode involving a desperate launch of Apollo 25 to conduct an Apollo 24 rescue and rescue mission. A post-credits scene and in 1983 featured a sea launch of a large rocket with a plutonium payload for the American colony of Jamestown on the moon.

The second season resumes 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 peak. Ronald Reagan is president and the greatest ambitions of science and space exploration are in danger of being wasted as the United States and the Soviets clash for control of resource-rich sites on the moon. The Department of Defense has shifted to mission control, and the militarization of NASA becomes central in the stories of several characters: some fight it, some use it as an opportunity to advance their own interests, and some find themselves in the stronger from a conflict that can lead to nuclear war.

The trailer opens with the disturbing news that the Soviets may try to develop a new weapon as a new class of candidate astronauts are introduced. The United States cannot let this go because “it would set a dangerous precedent.” Additionally, this weapon would be capable of dropping ammunition just about anywhere on Earth, so it’s a great threat to national security. As the Eurythmics play in the background, we meet Pathfinder, a new, more powerful space shuttle, and it looks like Kinnaman’s Ed Baldwin will be hired on his first mission. Will war break out on the moon, or will the United States live up to their claim that they have come in peace, “for all mankind”?

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

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