I actually only recently realized that most people actually think that NASA itself built and operated the hardware that put man on the moon or built the space shuttle, satellites etc.

NASA had only ever operated as sort of a loosely hands on project manager. The actual engineering, production and operation has always been essentially handled by the corporate military industrial complex.

IBM, ITT, Western Electric, Remington Rand, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and all the rest put things into space and landed on the moon. NASA comes up with some napkin bid specs, and coordinates delivery and writes the checks.