Can anyone explain Rolex to me?

Good solid watches from the universally recognised watch brand with a couple of "watches" for life classics like the Submariner. Currently hyped up beyond all recognition and because of that vastly overpriced for what you get. RRP has gone a fair bit up over time too.

and for the most part not very interesting design wise.

That's a huge part of their appeal for many buyers. They're consistent and very conservative over time so no shocks will throw the buyer's market they tend to appeal to. Look at the examples of Mercedes and BMW Fitz gave. They do the occasional oddball, but their bread and butter is soild, conservative middle class suburban cars which they do very well and they have design cues going back decades. When they stray from that they tend to sell less. Same for Rolex.

One thing I always found strange is how people say how amazing their marketing is. I tend to disagree. They have spent an absolute fortune to get to their position. A **** fortune on sponsoring global sports events and full page advertising for years and years.

I would say that in the last couple of decades their marketing has been pretty average but again consistent. I would regard the marketing of their founder to be the amazing end of it(with a later blip of genius in the 60's/70's).

Though people think of Rolex as Swiss today, they were much more an British/English company in outlook and market for much of their history. Their founder Wilsdorf was a strong anglophile, founded the company in London and even the name Rolex was invented to make it easier for English speakers to pronounce, recognise and remember. Consider their "budget" brand(or at least the one that survived); Tudor. Couldn't get any more English than that, even had the Tudor Rose as a logo for years. Remember "our man in Venice" and the French dollybird informing us how to correctly pronounce Swiss brands? Or the same guy's vid on how to pronounce Omega? Not required for Rolex.

What Wilsdorf spotted in the British market was an opening. And remember in 1908 Britain had the largest empire the world had ever seen. Swiss watches were the underdog in many ways. People wanted to buy "local". The Swiss sold their unbranded movements and dials to British suppliers who flogged them off to retailers who put their name on them. A gentleman would look for a Harrods or Asprey wristlet rather than an Omega or Zenith, or Longines or IWC(IWC were more a movement supplier than a watch brand back then, though their name was their way to go "international"). They even supplied movements in gilt finishing because that's what British watchmakers did.

Wilsdorf started to take the American approach to branding and marketing and fought to have his "British" Swiss watches named on the dial. That was a ballsy decision back then, but it worked. By the 1920's the British market was looking for Swiss brands more than retailers. That was all Wilsdorf. Rolex used local British celebrities to market their wares. Something also new to that market, but common in the US. He even nicked the waterproof watch in a goldfish bowl image for his "Rolex Oyster" marketing from a US campaign by Elgin/Depollier of a decade earlier.

So Rolex became the solidly middle class "good watch" of Britain and her empire. This was further reinforced in WW2 when alone among the Swiss brands Rolex supported Britain and refused to sell to the Nazis and sold them at massive discounts to British POW's. Again a brave move at the time. So it's not a shock a certain Ian Fleming owned one and put one on the wrist of his oh so British spy. And the next phase began...

Outside of Britain and her commonwealth Rolex were essentially unknown. If you look at US ads or industry mags from the 1950's Rolex are nowhere(they're not seen that often in European or even Swiss periodicals). They had tried to make inroads by gifting US dignitaries and presidents with their watches, but it didn't take off with the public. The huge success of James Bond helped. That was their "Omega Moonwatch" moment. As did the 60's American gra for all things "British" on the back of the Beatles etc. Rolex then threw big money into US advertising in National Geographic, Time magazine etc marketing their watches as adventurer pieces worn by sponsored "sporty" celebs. This massively expanded the brand recognition and they copied that to other markets. They also did less obvious things like heavily discounting their watches through American military PX's to get them out there as the military man's watch. They had tried to get the US military to buy them directly, but they were rejected as being overpriced and prone to leaks of all things. You'll notice that a lot of the time when an old American guy shows up on their antiques roadshow with a NOS Rolex from the 1960's he's a ex military chap who bought one when he served. And interestingly rarely wore.

So by the 70's in America Rolex had become the solidly middle class "good watch" there too. They just about weathered the quartz/digital crisis and were perfectly placed to get in on the mechanical revival. Consider the Daytona. A hard sell that pretty much didn't. It gained an automatic movement in the late 80's and with the resurgance of mechanical and initially with a sudden popularity in the Italian market of all places it finally started to sell in decent numbers. And then the internet happened...

The sponsorship of global sporting events keeps their name in lights. Most watches are not sold to watch geeks, but to muggles 😁 everyday people who watch sporting events. It had very much worked for Longines in the past. They had been pretty much the sporting timer brand for decades, but then they ran out of money during the 70's. IIRC the 72 Olympics was the last one they sponsored. Today they throw money at equestrian events which works very well in Asian and Arab markets were they sell a lot of their watches. TAG Heuer got huge in the 90's on the back of F1. When Seiko wanted a worldwide audience they sponsored the Olympics too(1964). Rolex sponsoring sporting events is good marketing.

Another thing Rolex do is keep a dignified distance in thier marketing. They avoid making historical claims of innovation, preferring to leave that to the fanbase ensuring plausible deniability(and they got stung a few times in the past when they did make such claims). Unlike others they won't even authenticate their own vintage watches and have in the past removed the patina and history of pieces in servicing(though they're not alone in that) and still the fanbase remains loyal.

It could have happened I suppose. Though Rolex's only offering close to their requirements was the Daytona, which was about as popular as a fart in a spacesuit at the time. It was likely not even on their radar. NASA were pretty lax in their watch requirements. They only tested a few watches and a couple of them had the same movements. They clearly weren't that pushed and it was a late addition to the programme(or program 😁). If you were designing an actual watch for spaceflight and especially EVA's none of the ones they tested were much use in reality. Too small, pretty much impossible to operate in an EVA suit with pressurised gloves. If they were to design one from scratch it would have likely been more along these lines:

A 1930's Zenith bombadier's "wrist" watch. Massive, a stopwatch and easy to use with gloved and clumsy fingers.