The US was not a bastion of technical capability or well educated people in the 1950s. To say that the "skill doesn't exist anymore" suggests a misunderstanding of "where it comes from" in the first place.
You can do the same thing for Apollo as you can for the Shuttle. The process of reading through these histories, from front to back, is incredibly enlightening, and shows just how with determination alone you can build something like this from scratch.
That being said.. it really also helps if there's a dual purpose use for the military.
The effect that war had on the technological progress, including learning the skills of how to manage a not-so-simple idea like going to the moon into reality was incredible, and a direct spinoff from the bureaucracy created during the war.
I'm a drop on the ocean only, but my case is the one I have: PhD in Computer Science, highly specialized and have lived and worked around the world , but there's not enough that attracts me to living in the US.
Its health system issues, the animosity against minorities and immigrants and the lack of reasonable immigration paths for professionals make it unsexy.
And as I said I'm literally nobody. How would the US attract real post Ww2 talent?
Expert welders can be trained in years. We could easily buy an Apollo-era generation of aerospace welders if we wanted them.
