What if the space race never ended?
Why it is hard sci-fi
An alternate history that diverges at the Apollo programme. The Soviets land first, the space race continues into the 1980s and beyond, and the show tracks the engineering and political consequences across decades. Each season jumps a decade and the show commits to a working set of new vehicles, missions, and political crises. The procedural rigour is in the engineering details. NASA development cycles, mission planning, and astronaut training all hold to real practice.
Science inside it
Lunar bases, Mars expeditions, ion-drive transit, helium-3 mining, near-Earth-asteroid capture, and a working portrayal of the mid-life cycle of an extended space programme. The show is rigorous about the cost of each jump and treats each season as a working budget on a different decades technology. The shows alternate-1969 starting point produces a different but coherent space history.