That kind of brings up some interesting questions of team composition. When you're building something complicated that will last 50 years, you probably want a few people on the team who are: 1) talented, 2) very young (like fresh out of college), and 3) have the mindset of a lifer. You deliberately get them involved in all the stuff and put them in the room when all the decisions are made, then they serve to preserve the institutional knowledge of the project for the latter half of its lifetime.
Some would freeze themselves to be thawed later to direct a several hundred year secret plan that only they know.
I do agree that we need to do a better job of celebrating the people that do maintenance which is what the vast majority of our field is based on.