The Media and Space Travel

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” This is a prologue for the original series of the famous science fiction Star Trek when it was first aired on NBC on September 8, 1966, attracting over 20 million viewers during the first four episodes. At that point in time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was about to turn eight years old, and astronauts were already starting to travel to low-Earth orbit and perform space walks as a part of Project Gemini.