Well, the pacing of those shots is like 2001: A Space Oddyssey, or Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture. With Star Trek, there were these prolonged shots showing the entire Enterprise (which they had built as a proper scaled model as opposed to just part of it like the series) while Kirk was travelling to it, or these shots of it moving through space or Spock doing some exploring in space of his own. Nowadays, despite having some great models of these Starfleet ships, they don't spend lots of time just showing it off. The audience can see it anyway throughout the film.
It's the same with Thunderball. They could've cut those shots more tightly and quickly and people would've still seen some of it, while other parts were unnecessary and just made the scene drag.
I think Sony realised this for Never Say Never Again, which is why it cut down on extensive underwater shots, which is one of the things they improved upon for that movie, even though the rest of Thunderball is superior.