The short answer is that those were conceived during economic boom times before the median American was sold down the river with outsourcing, financialization, and good old fashion corruption. 50 years after this crime was commited against the people, the ideals espoused in those fictions has become hollow and sour.

Star Trek is fiction, a hopeful vision of a far future and not a description of the present. ToS was also dark and verging on a horror series most of the time. The rampant optimism of the 1990's and TnG are NOT found in ToS. The Federation of ToS isn't a utopia or implied to be one, it's just more egalitarian than the present at the time which was defined by generational, racial, and economic fighting. It took place during the context of a war that claimed tens of thousands of American lives, most drafted from the ranks of our youth.

It's very easy to imagine a past defined by fictional narratives and idealized memories of the Cold War. Don't give in to nostalgia, it's a lie.

Neither Star Trek nor the Apollo program were popular at the time. The original Star Trek was cancelled after three seasons with no further content produced until a movie revival a decade later; contemporary polls of the Apollo program consistently showed that most people thought it was a waste of money. If (if) SpaceX and Tesla deliver on Musk's dreams, I expect people in the 2050s will wax nostalgic about the 2020s and complain that we can't summon the same spirit of adventure for the Dyson spheres Claude wants to build.

What's your argument? That we should put aside rationality and basic honesty for feel good vibes, no matter the lies?

Musk lies constantly. He lies about stupid things there's no need to lie about like being better at video games than he actually is: https://futurism.com/gamers-disgusted-musk-cheats-diablo-pat...

He lied about the Cybertruck being faster than it is. It's fast anyway. There was no need to lie about it but Musk is pathological. He simply can't help himself:

https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3H8--CQRE

Tesla never ran the quarter mile they claimed they did. It's pathetic.

My memory is the media was pretty negative back then too. You have to filter out the political person A says bad stuff about B shouts at C, unfair to D which is constantly in the news in all time periods and look at the cool things going on instead.

One of the good things about Musk is at least he has cool sounding projects like switching to carbon free transport, reusable rockets, cities on Mars, amazing abundance etc.

Some people deserve such negativity. I don't see what that has to do with star trek.

Selling out all of our values to make an extra buck.

Star Trek was pretty negative about this period in history.

In that universe, we had the Eugenics War/World War III during this time period. The most depraved and bloody war in Earth’s history that wiped out 1/3 of Earth’s human population and rendered hundreds of thousands of species extinct.

you can appreciate the work of spacex while also recognizing that Musk is one of history's greatest douchebags and civilization's worst enemies.