According to the DVD commentary, Matt Groening did not like the visual jokes of Homer's face turning into Popeye the Sailor Man and Richard Nixon when exposed to G-forces.
When Homer screams "Damn them all the hell!" after figuring out what the ending of Planet of the Apes meant parodies what the main protagonist's reaction was in finding the Statue of Liberty.
The face Homer made while simulating the shuttle launch is similar to Popeye the Sailor, while the face he makes during the blastoff is Richard Nixon.
The music that plays while Homer is eating the potato chips is The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II.
During the episode, there's a reference to the Alien chest bursting scene.
When the Simpson family comes to NASA, it references the TV series "The Beverly Hillbillies"
When the NASA scientists watch the clip of Home Improvement, Tim Taylor says, "Looks like it's back to jail for me" after running over his neighbor, Wilson. Tim Taylor was played by Tim Allen, who actually spent two years in a Michigan prison for cocaine possession in the 70's.
The next show the scientists use to show that audiences love blue-collar slobs is FOX's own Married... with Children, where Peg begging Al for sex and Al rejecting her is a running joke, and the show was known for having a raucous audience that would wildly cheer and laugh over the show's lowbrow humor (the sex jokes and any time Al flushed the toilet).
When Homer was calling NASA, he asked "how come I can't get no Tang around here?" Tang was provided to astronauts in NASA space missions since 1962 and was then becoming popularized[1]. Homer's later line "Hello, is this President Clinton? Good. I figured if anyone knew where to get some Tang, it'd be you!" is a double entendre referring to Clinton's reputation for his womanizing and sex scandals (at the time of this episode, it would have been the scandals involving Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones. The Monica Lewinsky scandal wouldn't come to light until the late 1990s).
When the space shuttle is attempting reentry, the song Aldrin and Banyon hum is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while Homer sings the original Golden Grahams cereal jingle.
Goofs[]
Homer's beard is yellow
When the three astronauts march prior to their trip, one of Homer's pupils disappears for a frame.
NASA sees Homer in a clip from outside of the space shuttle, but there is no video camera outside.
In some of the extreme close-ups during the montage of Homer eating potato chips, Homer's beard is colored yellow instead of its usual tan color.
