George Lucas made Star Wars because was inspired by old Buck Rodgers specials
Flash Gordon, not Buck Rogers. Though to be fair, Flash Gordon only exists because it was created as a direct and deliberate rip-off of Buck Rogers.
Though in the case of Star Wars, it's even worse than that. Huge chunks of A New Hope's plot are copied straight over from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, and a number of the X-Wing scenes towards the end were almost identical to dogfighting scenes from a WWII fighter movie Lucas watched for reference.