But our federal R&D budget (including both military and non) is about twice what it was during the Apollo time period, adjusting for inflation. It's a smaller share of of the GDP as a percentage, but the investment is unarguably much higher. That's also not counting industry R&D investments, which are almost certainly higher now adjusting for inflation.

I'm not sure when you would want to point to as a time when we were doing more science than we are right now.

The science we're doing today may not capture the imagination in quite the same way as the Apollo program does, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I'd also argue that much of the science of the last 50 years has had a far greater impact on the average person than the Apollo program.