For All Mankind — An Interesting Alternative History

I’ve recently gotten into watching this new Apple TV show, For All Mankind, and it is a really interesting piece of alternative history. Set in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it details the “Space Race” as it would have happened had the USSR been the first country to land on the surface of the moon, instead of the United States. In the show, that event only heats up the Space Race as the 2 countries go toe to toe in exploring and colonizing the Moon — building outposts and military bases, exploring mining sites, and running scientific experiments on the surface.

It is all very interesting to me to think about how the last 50 years may have been different in this regards. Contained in the plot also is talks of a race to Mars, a much more distant target. In some regards, the show gives a glimpse of what is now happening today, if the world would have been much more aggressive in exploring outer space back then. As it happened, exploration of space got largely deprioritized after the first humans landed on the moon in the 1960s. Only now, NASA and companies like SpaceX are making a point to drive the exploration of space beyond our Moon. Visionaries like Elon Musk (with SpaceX) are re-visiting ideas like coloning the Moon or Mars, and putting vast sums of money into it.

Personally, I think it is all cool and interesting, however I believe we would do well as a civilization to focus on the problems of our own world. If we could stop or slow global warming effectively, we can save our planet and never have the need to colonize Mars or some other extreme solution.