It's Not Theft When an Artist Does It

To fans of Star Trek, they are akin to the Apostle's Creed, words that can be recited from memory, a promise of a future to be believed in:

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

But as this article shows, they might have been taken from a government brochure called "Introduction to Outer Space":

…the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before.

Oops!

The author shows the links between Roddenberry and the Southern California space industry and this paper written for President Eisenhower. It was distributed nationwide in the wake of the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite.

He even shows where the design for the K-7 space station came from!

Remember, when you do it, it's plagiarism. When an artist does it, it's inspiration.