For All Mankind

The series is an alternate history, which only works because the real one is followed exactly up to the point it diverges. The Soviet Union lands a man on the Moon first, in June 1969, and everything after is an answer to that. From the record: NASA's management and astronaut corps, the hardware and the launch procedures, Apollo 11 and the missions that were cancelled in our timeline, the Mercury 13 women who were tested and never flown, and the political logic in which a space programme is funded only while it is losing. Real people appear beside invented ones, and the pleasure of it is knowing which is which.

The series imagines the Soviet Union landing on the Moon first and the Space Race never ending, following NASA's astronauts and engineers through a space programme that keeps growing.