star treks influence

Sparks For Your Imagination "Space... The final frontier...These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds...To seek out new life; new civilizations...To boldly go where no one has gone before!" Star Trek’s connection to the real world started with its monologue, “to boldly go where no one has gone before” (Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: the Original Series), which was taken almost word for word from a 1957 White House booklet on space exploration(Startrek.com). In their 80 episodes, the original Star Trek crew beamed themselves on and off the Enterprise, traveled at warp speed, found new civilizations, cured deadly alien diseases, and really did go where no man had gone before. As a result of Star Trek: the Original Series real world connectability, it helped Americans perceive and conceptualize what society could achieve through technology and medicine using math and science.
Science fiction deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society. When Star Trek first came out in 1966, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used futuristic technology and a diverse cast of actual (not animated) actors to connect to the real world in order to help the show become more popular (Star Trek: the Original Series). With new technology coming out at the time and the space race occurring, the Star Trek series directly related to current events. Though the show was not very popular when it first aired, it jumped in the ratings when The United States put a man on the moon (memoryalpha.org). In fact, the first space shuttle orbiter was originally to be named Constitution in honor of the U.S. constitution, but was successfully changed by Star Trek viewers to The Enterprise after the main space ship on the show. (NASA.gov). In general, Star Trek has been known to be “Written more faithful to science than any other science fiction series shown on Television” (NASA.gov). With Star Trek’s diverse