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I'm fairly certain the lunar landing required perhaps not perfection but pretty damn close planning.

Modern heresy is applying anecdotal solutions to situations as learnings for all problems.

well, yes and no. The apollo program operated on a tick-tock schedule where they did progressively harder missions. I interpret this as a series of proof-of-concept deliverables which allowed the team to develop expertise.

Then later they could define & hit their tolerances for orbital mechanics, fuel budgets, system redundancy.

Same deal with faraday / maxwell / einstein. The experimenter (faraday) measured & applied new phenomena, then maxwell came up with general laws, then einstein figured out their implications.

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