The Pioneers

It is a commonplace that past, present and future are relative terms but think about it. Everyone lives in their present. People in our future will reflect on their pasts, some of which will be earlier parts of our future. The crew in a later Star Trek series harked back to the pioneering days of James Kirk. When James Blish's Earthmen came home:

"...the challenges which were now ringing around the heads of the Okies were like voices from history: 40 Eridani, Procyon, Kruger 60, Sirius, 61 Cygni, Altair, RD-4degrees 4048, Wolf 359, Alpha Centauri... to hear occasionally from Earth itself was no novelty, but these challenges were almost like being hailed by ancient Greece or the Commonwealth of Massachusets."
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT CHAPTER SEVEN, pp. 408-409.

Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry:

"...would much rather have lived in the high and spacious days of the trader princes, when no distance and no deed looked too vast for man, than in this twilight of empire."
-Poul Andeson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER TWO, p. 209.

In Anderson's Time Patrol series:

"Thirty first millennium. Outlaws after the failure of the Exaltationists to cast off the weight of a civilization grown older than the Old Stone Age was to me."
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 279.

See also:

Time Past And The Threshold Of The Future
Early Days