Chris

Well it shouldn’t … for all it’s a very well made show, the premise is nuts. The N-1 could never have landed humans on the moon. The required level of complex engineering was simply beyond the USSR. They made great strides where they were able to steal secrets from the West (such as the Tupolev Tu-144, aka Concordeski, or Buran-Energia, their space shuttle) but where they couldn’t, their own scientists just weren’t up to it.

Even if we allow the idea that they might have somehow managed it (without blowing up on the pad and causing what was possibly the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosion in all history) the economic fundamentals that drove the USSR to its demise in the early 1990s could not possibly have changed as a result of that, which means even if they got to the lunar surface, they couldn’t have sustained a moon programme. The Apollo programme pushed America to the limits of affordability and it was in far better economic health throughout the Cold War.

Don’t get me wrong, I follow the show and I enjoy it, but the idea that the Cold War has somehow lasted right to the end of the 20th century with the Soviets funding not only vast conventional and nuclear armed forces, but also an enormous interplanetary space programme, is completely bonkers.