The difference isn’t whether or not NASA could do this. The difference is that NASA’s been funded by an anti-intellectual plutocracy who’d prefer to get rich bombing peasants in the middle east than do anything which would actually benefit humanity.
SpaceX engineers were people inspired by NASA, and would’ve likely ended up at NASA if the 4 year election cycle didn’t sabotage most projects.
Math, despite being a great skill to have, is not mandatory for a large volume of programming roles. It may hurt you in some interviews but interviews are a fucking crap shoot / shit metric either way. Computers do most of the math, so you don’t have to!
Source: I’m dyslexic, suffered from dyscalculia and migraines until I was allowed to use a calculator, and barely passed high school math. No degree. No bootcamp. 8 years as a dev.
I’ve also excelled in multiple roles where colleagues were math or CS PHD’s, and become the senior or go-to on more projects than not. The key part is to know your strengths. I’m never gonna accept a role developing accounting software, or anything that would require me to code complex math on a regular basis. You’d be surprised how far you can get with Google.