I wouldn't describe it like that, and in the 1950s and 1960s, during the development of the space program...not at all.
The technology used for the moon program was being designed in house, by engineers working for the government, tested by government employed military pilots. Outside firms like GE, Boeing, etc., got a piece of that pie if NASA thought one of those firm could lend manufacturing value. But it was to NASA specs for a lowest bid. The manufacturers were not calling the shots.
That's a wildly different model than today's Big Pharma biz. FDA acts as a quasi science/business regulatory agency, with a healthy dose of corporate nepotism (e.g., former FDA serving on Big Pharma boards). Big Pharma does the R&D, and their army of lobbyists, marketing and PR teams descend on both the FDA and congress critters to tilt the regulatory process in their favor. Consider Oxycontin: The regulator at the FDA who approved that little pill version of the atomic bomb ended up at a cushy job at Purdue Pharma within a year or two of approval. Crony capitalism at its finest. In the case of the vaccines, CDC and NIH, public health agencies who are supposed to concern themselves with scientific reality, somehow got in the boat with Big Pharma, the FDA, and were rowing just as hard, if not harder.
While I don't doubt there were probably a few back door deals done at NASA in the 1960s, it was much less prominent than it is today.
