It’s too bad that we’ll never catch up with the 20th-century ideals of astrofuturism. We are a little under 100 years out from when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation take place, and I do not think we’ll be able to advance that much. All astrofuturism assumes that the cultural importance of the Space Age of the 1960s will increase exponentially despite it going in the opposite direction. Sure, Elon Musk claims he will bring the US military to space, but do we think he’ll be able to do that efficiently? There’s a big difference between an eccentric billionaire funding space travel that people don’t really care about versus the government investing billions of dollars into winning the Cold War. 

Maybe it’s good that the events of Star Trek aren’t going to happen in real life, at least not while we’re around. We can enjoy Star Trek instead of living it.