Exactly, nerds are often trusting and they were so happy to participate they'd ignore stuff that was off a hair and wish for the ability to tell everyone their roll in historical space mission. Yeah tricking the participants that were not in on it being fake would make it so much simpler. The tech was so basic back then. I was in the service training and they used a room sized computer that cost over a million to grade our work and it took hours to do. So this computers on board and a huge program to run it when hard drives weighed hundreds of lbs and they were using paper punch cards in businesses to run factory equipment still or paper reels with slots. It was to far above the tech for the time to do I believe since the industries would reflect the latest tech of the time to sell to the richest businesses for the business to brag about and to increase profits.