They'd be retired by now, even the most junior engineer in 1970 would be into their seventies.

Most of them, yes, but there were some serious geezers wandering the halls before the pandemic. One of my coworkers started at NASA the same year I was born, and she doesn't show any signs of retiring any time soon. These folks don't usually end up directly in management positions, but they often hold advisory roles that give them the ear of those calling the shots.

Perhaps but their direct reports and coworkers that followed them were or are aware of their predecessors goals.

This sort of already happened when some of the Apollo engineers came out of retirement for the Constellation Program. The program was cancelled and they went back into retirement. Nobody came back for the Space Launch System because it was just a jobs program with no real substance. Also, they were very old at that point.

Yeah seems like a lot of the programs aims were to build a moon base of sorts and get a person to mars. They obviously haven't met those goals and have now been heavily defunded, enough that it'll be impossible for them to actually follow through. The latest goals are the same and I can't help but be sceptical if they'll ever get back to the moon.

Yup. The "missions" are an excuse for funding. But the funding is insufficient and misallocated to support the stated missions in earnest.

If NASA gets to the moon again, it'll be on a cheap ride they buy from SpaceX.