Soviet Cosmonauts Trained at Star City as They Raced to Beat America to the Moon. Now, a New TV Series Imagines What Happened Behind the Base's Walls

That’s the question posed by “For All Mankind,” a hit television show that imagines a scenario in which the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States never came to an end. With something to prove in this fictional timeline, America doesn’t retreat from its space ambitions the way it did in real life. Instead, the country goes all in on venturing to the moon—and beyond.

The series’ fifth season, now airing on Apple TV, is set in the 2010s. By then, multiple Earth-based countries, including America and Russia, operate and cohabit, albeit tensely, in a colony on Mars.

Season 1 of “For All Mankind” opened in 1969, at the end of this alternate universe’s race to the moon. American astronauts in Houston watch mournfully as the Soviets plant their flag on the lunar surface. The series is told from these NASA employees’ point of view, as they aggressively move forward with different projects, including a lunar base, an all-woman astronaut crew and even a hotel that orbits Earth. All of this work is merely a preamble, though, to NASA’s desire to colonize Mars, which ignites another race between the aspiring galactic superpowers of America, Russia and new contender North Korea. Until now, however, the series had never shown the Soviet side of the story.