That is an interesting bit on the lens being NASA - they never circulated that information at the time. It was said to be an Angenieux f0.7 as I remember. Nowadays you can buy such a fast lens but it is still expensive.
You are right about the zoom in/dolly out effect. Hitchcock invented that for Vertigo. He said that once he was at a party and got too drunk and saw everything simultaneously going away from him while staying in the same place. So he wanted to create that effect for James Stewart's feeling when looking down from the heights of the window and tower. So an expensive system was created to dolly in while using a zoom lens to go from telephoto to wide angle, matching the edges of the frame. It creates essentially a changing of perspective from everything close together to everything far apart.
It is instructive to look at the useage of this technique. First, it was a specific invention by Hitchcock for his own film to create a visual analog of the psychological turmoil of his character.
Second it was a mere "shock" effect imitated by Spielberg in Jaws. It was not original of course, but at least Spielberg had a reason to use it. Nowadays, it is utterly meaningless, and used as a slick trick of cynical cinematographers who are bored. These same cinematographers are responsible for the destruction of film grammar and cinematic meaning in their constant changing of focal lenghts FOR NO REASON (remember that Robert Bresson shot entire films with one 50 mm lens) and useage of camera movement FOR NO REASON (thereby nullifying the meaning of cameera movement).
One odd thing I noticed and wondered about in going to an ANCIENT classic film, like for example, Dracula from the 30s with Lugosi, was that a slow-moving, slightly stilted motion picture from that time seemed more 3-dimensional and "real" than the latest films I had seen in the theater with all their use of every trick in the cinematography book learned in almost a century since. How could this be?
I realized it was because the old style films used a strict demarcation of a limited number of focal lengths for the lenses, not to mention a methodical approach to "covering" a scene based upon something which very closely resembles the way the human brain takes in a real scene. You are first aware of the overall place in which you are situated: the wide angle lens (35mm) and Establishing Shot. Next you are focusing upon the most generally significant events which tend to be an interaction between several people: the Normal Focus lens (50mm) which corresponds closely to the human eye's perspective. And finally, when something very special occupies your attention, your brain creates a Closeup (ca 100mm) which THROWS OTHER ELEMENTS OF THE SCENE OUT OF FOCUS and acts as "Big Brass" as I remember Hitchcock put it once.
The point of all this is there was a psychological point for each of the standard useages and conventions in cinematic treatment of a scene back in those days.
TODAY THERE IS NOTHING! There is no standard, no convention, no meaning except what is supplied by the individual. And woe to those who depend upon all the individuals now making films. And what is worse, film schools are churning out goofball directors whose sole purpose in existence is to prove how HOT they are by using 1) Maximum number of cuts in smallest possible amount of time and 2) Maximum number of cinematic techniques in the equivalent space. They have been instructed by their professors to watch every great film, and they are now determined to put every great film into each second of their own films.
It is a ludicrous and sorry spectacle of utter meaninglessness. AND THESE ARE THE ONES WITH AN EDUCATION!!!