1974: As women across America celebrate the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, a launch pad accident results in the explosion of the Saturn V rocket that would have carried the Apollo 23 astronauts to the moon, where they were scheduled to exchange places with the crew of three already occupying the Jamestown lunar habitat at the moon’s south pole. The Apollo 23 crew is lifted to safety by their capsule’s escape tower, but when the capsule comes down hard on land instead of at sea, the crew still suffers major injuries. In the months that follow, NASA launches a technical investigation, while the FBI conducts inquiries into whether Soviet agents might have sabotaged the Saturn rocket, a scenario that NASA’s own investigations have already debunked. An independent technical report is made available to NASA, but only if it is personally handed over to Margo Madison by its author – Wernher Von Braun, whom she has no interest in seeing again, and with whom NASA refuses to publicly associate itself. The gap between flights also gives the Soviets time to establish their own permanently crewed lunar habitat, Zvezda, only eight miles away from Jamestown at Shackleton Crater. It quickly becomes apparent that the FBI, while supposedly looking for treacherous communist sympathizers in NASA’s ranks, is also taking this opportunity to find and expose homosexuals there as well. Margo learns from Von Braun’s report that political trade-offs led to a change of contractors, ultimately leading to the Apollo 23 accident…and then learns that this information is to be classified.
written by Stephanie Shannon
directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
music by Jeff RussoCast: Joel Kinnaman (Edward Baldwin), Michael Dorman (Gordo Stevens), Sarah Jones (Tracy Stevens), Shantel VanSanten (Karen Baldwin), Jodi Balfour (Ellen Waverly), Wrenn Schmidt (Margo Madison), Chris Bauer (Deke Slayton), Colm Feore (Wernher Von Braun), Eric Ladin (Gene Kranz), Wallace Langham (Harold Weisner), Krys Marshall (Danielle Poole), Olivia Trujillo (Aleida Rosales), Nate Corddry (Larry Wilson), Meghan Leathers (Pam Horton), Ben Begley (Charlie Duke), Leonora Pitts (Irene Hendricks), James Urbaniak (Gavin Donahue), Noah Harpster (Bill Strausser), Nick Toren (Tim “Bird Dog” McKiernan), Ryan Kennedy (Michael Collins), Spencer Garrett (Roger Scott), Megan Dodds (Andrea Walters), Martin Grey (Scott Kraus), Tait Blum (Shane Baldwin), Mason Thames (Daniel Stevens), Michael James Bell (Principal Mike Russell)
LogBook entry by Earl Green