The For All Mankind Season 5 Mars Set Details That Most Fans Won't Even Notice

"For All Mankind" is one of the best sci-fi shows on Apple TV. Unfortunately, the streamer is far from the biggest in the world, so not everyone has yet been exposed to "For All Mankind." If you do decide to give it a watch, make sure to pay attention to one of the show's highlights: the production design. Specifically, the Mars mission control set is full of accurate details, with each button having a specific purpose. It shows just how careful and precise the "For All Mankind" team is, even if most fans won't even notice the attention to detail.

Without spoiling too much, the show takes place in an alternate history whereby the Soviets are the first to land on the moon, kicking off heightened competition between the USSR and the United States. In season 5, humankind has built a home on Mars, with mission control transferring from its traditional Houston base to the Red Planet. As detailed in a piece from Gizmodo, this required an all new design which incorporated so many realistic elements that the set is as about as close to a real mission control as its possible to get without being at NASA HQ.

"For All Mankind" was created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi, and the latter two spoke to Gizmodo about the show's 360-degree Mars mission control set. "We are pretty sure we can actually launch a spaceship from this room," said Wolpert, with Nedivi adding, "There's not a button here that wasn't thought through. Everything on these sets is thought through in terms of why it's there, what purpose it serves, and that goes to almost every set on the show."

"For All Mankind" is set to end with the upcoming sixth season, and when it does finally wrap up it will look a whole lot different to how it started. With each season jumping forward in time by about a decade, the sci-fi series has rapidly evolved in terms of its look and the type of technology it showcases. That, according to Ben Nedivi, has made it more challenging to keep the production design grounded. "It's getting harder as the show becomes more science fiction," he explained. "But this year is especially exciting because it's the buildup of identity. People living on Mars, it's a home."

Going much further than Mars would make it nigh on impossible to keep mission control tied to real-world technology, but since "For All Mankind" season 5 is set in the 2010s, that likely means the upcoming sixth season will be set in the 2020s. In that sense, there should be plenty of existing examples on which to base the mission control set should the showrunners feel the need to update it. "For All Mankind" has already earned a NASA astronaut's seal of approval for its accuracy, and it wouldn't want to ruin its record by leaning so far into sci-fi it loses its connection to real-world tech.

For now, it seems the co-creators are just happy to have gotten as far as they have. Nedivi explained how the show will use Mars as a "launch pad" for exploring the solar system even further, including the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. He said, "The fact that we're able to tell that story and get to the end is incredible."