I was watching this documentary Happy People, about people who live in the Siberian Taiga (by Werner Herzog, would highly recommend). A man is talking about making a new set of skis, and it shows the incredibly long and careful process of selecting the perfect trees, chopping them down in the right way, treating the wood and so on. He mentions how mass manufactured skis are light and cheap and will work fine for a while, but when one breaks and you're in the Siberian wilderness you can't just go to the store for a replacement. That really stuck with me.
1960s US is hardly Siberia and I don't think any NASA engineers had their heads on the chopping block if their designs failed. But engineering philosophy was still rooted in survival; the primary goal was to make something that wouldn't kill you because it fails.
You hear stories about artisans in the old days refusing work because they don't believe what they're being asked to make is safe or reliable enough for the person asking for it. Maybe it's romanticized and idealized, maybe it's just them covering their ass so they don't get blamed. But that philosophy of personal responsibility not just for making things according to the constraints, but for the outcome too, is something that served society well for a long time before slowly disappearing over the past century or so.
It hasn't left without reason. As the things being made became less key to survival and more key to thrival, as the world became more interconnected and safe, it didn't make as much sense. Just think of how many crazy, inventive concepts we use every day wouldn't have been made if they could only be made to work reliably! Our entire modern existence is based off things that don't work reliably. It's a blessing and a curse.
But when we're exploring the final frontier we need frontier thinking and frontier technology; things that, from the ground up, are built to work first with all other constraints secondary. Unfortunately spaceflight endeavors today must invariably build off the 'good enough, when it breaks just make a new one' foundation that permeates modern design at every level. Even if you want to make something nowadays with the sole purpose of working, as long as you're using any technological advancements made in the past 50 years chances are you're using something that wasn't made with that goal in mind.