movies

That’s kinda what I’m saying. There are so many interesting “what ifs” if you dig into the history of American and Soviet space programs (in my opinion, the most basic research you should do if you want to make a show like this), but the showrunners took the lazy route like swapping real world events between the countries, without regards for the unique differences and characteristics of the space programs between the two ideologically opposing countries.

Truth in television I know some boombers.

This is the only realistic part of the show!

Yes, and even if you could make it go further, by not dropping the EFT and refueling it in orbit somehow, it would still be a stupid fucking idea to push around all that useless wing and heat tile mass in space.

That's why the original plan for the STS before Nixon cut it to the bone was for the shuttle to dock at a low earth orbit station where crew and supplies would transfer to a completely different vehicle, a nuclear engine wingless lightweight vehicle never intended to enter an atmosphere, which would take them to a station in lunar orbit, where they would transfer again to a dedicated lander vehicle.

Also, the Shuttle was supposed to have smaller wings, a fully reusable EFT, and no solid boosters. The recognizable Shuttle profile we see in For All Mankind was directly a consequence of the cuts to the Shuttle program because NASA had to go to the DoD for funding to complete the project at all, and the Air Force demanded enough wing area to glide back to US territory after a single polar orbit in order to snatch Soviet satellites out of space, as well as a much larger cargo space than NASA had originally designed for.

And the SRBs were a grift giveaway to one Congressman who had the SRB manufacturer in his district. They should never have been part of a human-rated launch system.

So seeing the familiar Shuttle design in the For All Mankind timeline is already incoherent, but seeing that familiar design in lunar orbit is completely ridiculous.

Why is movie/tv SF always inventing alternative climate crises instead of just using the real one? Mysterious water shortage in this, mysterious crop failure in Interstellar. It's weird, there's a perfectly dramatic actual climate crisis if they want a climate crisis.

Also weird that they invented a whole different space agency for the RoK, SAA instead of KARI.

No dropped boosters to get to orbit, the whole stack is still together in lunar orbit, burning prograde for some reason. Then they disconnect the shuttle module from the stack while the stack engines are still burning and the shuttle, with engines off, suddenly falls towards the moon where they land with no engines doing pull up on the stick airplane style. The shuttle depressurizes and the depressurization keeps blowing wind from nowhere on and on for like a full minute.

I am begging SF writers to play KSP.

Lol did that actually happen?

I feel like the pilot episode sets the tone for how the show portrays the Russians.

It didn’t show the Soviets as the good guys, but it also showed that they were genuinely spooked by Reagan (“the Americans had elected a mad man as their president”) and reacting to what the Americans might do to them.

the Russian stuff in The Americans is (mostly) considerably less cringe - it feels like they at least made an effort to give all the principal Russian characters some interiority and not just be cold operators or whatever, and iirc they worked with Russian translators and a decent number of Russian actors to make their dialogue relatively credible. the show was created by an ex-CIA guy who now writes books like this which should tell you a lot about the politics of the show (in short "both sides bad but also both sides rational"). in general it's wittier and better written than FAM by a lot mainly cause it can't coast on cool space shit. also, wigs.