there is part of me that really wishes that the takeaway from star trek was not a fervent want for humans to further space exploration now and instead that in the 23rd century, they are space explorers because what happened in the 21st & 22nd century made way for it. they are living in a post-scarcity world. their 21st century is described as having been in nuclear warfare hell, meaning that between then and their 22nd century there was the development of key inventions such as replicators. the existence of which would effectively collapse modern economic systems by way of eliminating scarcity with the technology's existence (assumption we have to make here: the creation of replicators does not come at the cost of any other possible factor, their existence is a net positive). those systems being intricately tied with war. what i'm really saying here is i wish replicators as they function in trek were real and that maybe we could actually live in a food secure world if the wealthy were not trying to monetize everything from space to atmosphere to earth
