Then again the OLD NASA hired people based on 'best and brightest' not sexual kink, skin pigmentation and political party.
Understand, My dad built tracking gear at the Cape for Radiation inc. ( now Harris), and our neighbor worked on the Crawler from design until he retired in the 90’s. 4 bit computers with 1k memory (or less). My Dad would take us out to the Pads on the weekend ( He had a couple of secret fishing spots on the banana river, and a place he liked to surf fish when the blues were running) and we could walk up to them even if they had a missile on them, unless they were fueled. I remember the crawler coming back from placing a Saturn 1,and we got out of the car and walked alongside it for a while. Different times, we got out of class in elementary school so see launches, so Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launches, or any satellites going up, like echo, telstar, or the surveyors going to the moon, we were able to watch. Some Gemini astronauts came to our school, and brought some liquid nitrogen, They got out some gloves and tongs, bounced a red rubber ball, then placed the red rubber ball in it and shattered it by dropping it to the floor. Cool thing to watch when your 9 years old. On you tube watch the first 5 minutes of Frankenstein meets the Space Monster. It’s a view of A1A leading past Patrick AFB through Cocoa Beach , through the Cape Canaveral gate and up to the old Admin building. Good Times.
If you watch the youtube video, as a kid I climbed on the Snark in front of Patrick and scooted out to the nose. An Air Police guy came by in a jeep, yelled up “ Don’t fall off on my shift”, so I scooted back down. My dad was fishing across A1A on the beach, and his rule was “ I don’t want to hear that you got in trouble”, otherwise we were free to explore and play. Different times.