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-con

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.