What if the Soviets had beaten the Americans to the moon? An alternate space race history

Two television shows – For All Mankind and Star City – imagine an alternative universe in which Soviet cosmonauts completed the first moon landing in 1969 ahead of US astronauts. But how might global history have unfolded if the space race had taken a different course, asks Matthew Trask – and could it have ensured the survival of the Soviet Union?

Astronaut inside a dimly lit spacecraft, wearing a helmet and reaching toward a control lever beside a large circular hatch, surrounded by glowing panels, switches, and screens

Published: June 12, 2026 at 3:21 PM

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The year is 1969, and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov has just become the first human to land on the moon. This moment marks a decisive victory for the Soviet Union and sparks a protracted space race that sees both the Soviets and the US reach farther into the farther reaches of the solar system.

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That’s the premise of the Apple TV series For All Mankind, running since 2019: what if the Soviets had won the race to the moon? It explores that alternate history by imagining how Nasa and the US government might respond to falling behind in the Cold War space race. What it doesn’t depict is the Soviet perspective.

That changed on 29 May, when spin-off show Star City dropped on Apple TV. It tells the story of the Soviet space agency’s efforts to beat the US to the moon, offering a different take on the events leading up to the first season of For All Mankind.

People seated in a dimly lit control room, wearing shirts and ties, focused on consoles with ventilation panels and communication equipment.

An engineer at Soviet Ground Control, played by Josef Davies, in Star City. The new show delves deeper into what the world may have looked like if the Soviet Union had reached the moon first – building on the story from For All Mankind | Credit: Apple TV Press

The alternate history explored in both shows echoes a period in our timeline that was fraught with tension and espionage but also illuminated by some of the greatest feats ever accomplished by humanity. They depict one possible set of outcomes to that ‘what if’ question – but can history provide pointers to what might actually have happened had Soviet cosmonauts reached the moon before the US in 1969?

How close did the Soviets really come to beating Nasa to the moon?

Whether you’re old enough to remember the space race as it unfolded, or you were born after the turn of the millennium, almost everyone around the world will be familiar with the images of Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 taking their first steps on the moon.

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong famously said – celebrating not the achievement of one nation but the collective advancement of the whole human race. These were revolutionary words, spoken at the height of the Cold War between his country and those behind the so-called Iron Curtain.

It is easy to forget just how close the Soviets came to stealing a march on the US. After all, the first artificial objects sent into space were the Soviet craft Sputnik 1 and 2, launched in 1957. And Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in 1961.

Despite these early successes, the Soviets lacked the laser focus with which Nasa and the US targeted the moon through the Apollo programme, and suffered from the effects of a fractious administration managing multiple projects all competing for funding.

“It was a byzantine system beset by internal rivalry, nepotistic patronage and wasteful duplication,” Dr Thomas Ellis said of the Soviet space programme, speaking to HistoryExtra in 2021. In order to win the space race, the Soviet project would have needed to behave “like the American image of it”.

Star City presents a vision of history in which these issues were resolved, allowing the Soviets to win out. Interestingly, the show’s lead, played by Rhys Ifans and billed as chief designer, is the driving force behind the Soviet race to the moon. In season 2 of For All Mankind, it is implied that his character may have been inspired by Sergei Korolev, the real life ‘glavny konstruktor’ behind the rockets that put both Sputnik and Gagarin into orbit.

Person outdoors wearing a grey fedora, dark‑rimmed glasses, and a dark coat, standing in natural daylight with a blurred road and trees behind them

Rhys Ifans (pictured) stars as the chief designer in Star City. The character is likely inspired by Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev, who played a significant role in the USSR’s space programme | Credit: Apple TV Press

Korolev died in 1966, three years before the US reached the moon. “Had he lived longer, Korolev would have continued to be a crucial cog in the machine to achieve crewed space flight and in developing the N1 rocket (the Soviet version of the Saturn V),” Jonny Wilkes wrote in BBC History Revealed magazine in 2021.

Star City imagines a universe in which Korolev – or at least a Korolev analogue – lived long enough to see the Soviets beat the US to the moon.

How might the Cold War have unfolded after a Soviet moon landing?

Behind the scientific breakthroughs, speeches and rocket launches, an ideological war was being waged.

This conflict was about, amongst other things, the competing ideologies of capitalism and communism. And economic and social structures underpinned both US and Soviet approaches to the space race.

Had the Soviets beaten the US to the moon, might the Cold War have unfolded differently?

“There would have been huge celebrations in the Soviet Union,” said Ellis, “with parades and ceremonies symbolically linking the space heroes to the Communist Party’s role as the unquestioned guiding force.”

Such a victory would have provided the Soviets with a “huge, much-needed prestige boost… both at home and abroad,” Ellis noted – and a victory in the political and economic battle against capitalism epitomised by the US.

Stylised Soviet space‑age poster showing a large golden figure reaching through space with rockets beside them, holding a bright star marked with the hammer and sickle above Earth’s curve

A Soviet propaganda poster from 1963 proclaims “our triumph in space is a hymn to the Soviet country”. Six years later, the US would beat the USSR to the moon | Credit: Getty Images

It might well have been Alexei Leonov, the first man to complete a spacewalk and the cosmonaut widely thought of as Neil Armstrong’s Soviet counterpart, written into the history books as the first man on the moon.

“Like the Apollo astronauts, these lunar cosmonauts would have followed a hero’s welcome in the homeland with a victory lap tour around the world,” Ellis continued.

Meanwhile, the Americans would have been left licking their wounds. Such a public defeat would have made the administration and its ideology look weak.

“Publicly, there would be gracious congratulations and invites to the White House,” Ellis added. “Privately, President Nixon would have been seething.” Such a defeat could have provided the requisite fuel for US politicians who sought a reduction in Nasa’s overall budget – people who, as Ellis noted, might have “disparaged space racing as the sort of propagandistic spectacle best left to the communists”.

For All Mankind suggests a different outcome. In that show, the space race never ends; instead, Americans and Soviets vie to reach various milestones in space exploration ahead of their rivals. “The Soviets would undoubtedly have continued exploring space [if they’d achieved the first moon landing],” said Ellis, “spending subsequent decades attempting to press their advantage.”

“Astronauts inside a quarantine module labelled ‘Hornet + 3’ smile and speak with a man in a suit standing outside the window, with presidential and ‘authorised personnel only’ signs visible on the module

President Nixon (right) celebrates with Apollo 11 astronauts (from left to right) Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin on their return from the moon. Nixon “would have been seething” if the US had lost the space race, says Dr Thomas Ellis | Credit: Getty Images

We see this idea borne out in For All Mankind, as the space race escalates in the decades after that landing, with attempts to establish permanent moon bases and even to reach Mars and beyond.

Ellis suggested that such goals would have created a very different political and economic landscape, fundamentally changing the latter half of the Cold War if Soviet funds were channelled into a spiralling pace race.

Might a Soviet moon landing have prevented the collapse of the USSR?

In the short term, that success would have provided a huge boost to the Soviet propaganda machine, allowing the moon landing to be hailed as a victory for communism on the world stage.

“A successful moonshot might well have provided a new potent diplomatic and propaganda tool,” commented Ellis, “and led to an uptick in membership for Third World communist parties.”

However, in the longer term it might have led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. “Prestige is powerful, but it wouldn’t have invalidated the economic and political weaknesses,” Ellis said. “Continued attempts by the Soviet Union to maintain their lead over the US may have served to highlight the structural problems deep-rooted within the Soviet economy. It is difficult to imagine a moonshot preventing the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Star City and For All Mankind offer glimpses of what might have been had the Soviets beaten the US to the moon in 1969 – and today’s world would be a very different place.

Star City premiered on 29 May on Apple TV. For All Mankind seasons 1–5 are all available to watch now on the service

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Matthew Trask is a writer and journalist

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