it truly is, especially visually. The vfx are incredible for any time. And I'm not ever talking about the ending, which is mostly just film-editing; I'm talking about the space scenes that actually feel like space, or the scene where frank makes a complete loop running through the ship, or the zero g scene when the space age is first introduced. That's all astounding, and it boggles the mind to think how they achieved that with practical fx

And this was made around the time of the original Star Trek and before Star Wars.

Its prescience is a whole other layer on top of that. It was obviously influenced by the space race and how that captured the public imagination: what will we find on the moon? Will we have a moon colony? Will we have commuter class space travel? What's next, travelling to another planet? Will computers be sentient?

And lo and behold, they were only about 25 years off with some guesses. And it's looking more and more likely that the rest are coming down the pipe.