If only NASA could run experiments so that we could understand how the concept of fear-based self preservation eliminates any semblance of courage when faced with even the smallest threat to their ill-defined paradigm of manhood.

You’re significantly underestimating how many Chud engineers NASA employs. The agency that was founded by Nazis refugees has always had a shit history on race politics, cinema hagiographies produced decades later notwithstanding.

In a parallel universe where we have a functioning federal government

One of the biggest jokes of the US depiction of the Space Race was how many times we got our asses drubbed by Russians with less money, manpower, and educational resources, simply because our administration was so cartoonishly incompetent. We have an obscenely wealthy federal government that can afford to fuck up on the scale of trillions of dollars and still come out ahead.