James Thurber's original short story had been published many years before this TV adaptation, long before the days of US space exploration. In the story, Jack Smurch has become famous as the first man ever to fly solo right around the world. This suggests very strongly that Thurber intended the story as a sharp satirical comment on the hero-worship extended to legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, who, in the years following his famous solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927, was revealed as an extreme right-winger politically and even (before the Second World War) an admirer of Hitler's.
This episode takes place in 1961.