The first depiction of NASA astronaut Sally Ride. In reality she was America's first woman in space. Some aspects of the characters of the show are based on Ride, such as Gordo and Tracy Stevens (the "married space couple"; Ride was married to fellow astronaut Steve Hawley), and Ellen Wilson (a closeted lesbian astronaut, married to a man to stifle suspicion).
While Pathfinder wasn't the name of a real NASA shuttle orbiter, it is the name given to a test vehicle. Constructed in 1977 out of steel and wood, it was later placed on display in the Great Space Shuttle Exhibition in Tokyo in the early 1980s. It was put on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in May 1988 and is undergoing restoration as of March 2021.
Although this series generally depicts the "For All Mankind" world's space programs progressing more quickly than reality, this episode mentions two examples in which real-world space events were delayed. In our world, the Skylab space station was launched May 14 1973 and occupied by three, three-man crews for over 171 days in 1973-74; eventually its orbit decayed and it returned to Earth July 11 1979, mostly in western Australia. For the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, both craft launched 15 July 1975, and docked on 17 July for about 44 hours; this would represent the final Apollo mission and the only space mission of Deke Slayton (who died in 1974 in the TV series). The TV series, on the other hand, depicts both of these programs in the early 1980s.