While Starfield takes place in the far future, long after Humans have become a space-faring civilization, the game does take some inspiration from the real history of space exploration. Leading up to the release of Starfield, Bethesda stated the game was inspired by the US and USSR Space Race - which lead to the famous Mercury and Apollo space missions.
The team has described Starfield's aesthetic as "Nasa-Punk", inspired by the real NASA designs of the space-race era, with various space suits from Starfield bearing a resemblance to the Apollo era space suits. In this episode of The Real History Of, host Dave Klein dives deep into the full history of Space Exploration, where we're at today, and what the future currently looks like. This is The Real History of Starfield.