I’m not arguing that the frame shift is identical to rockets, just that assumption breaking probably is a way to avoid such risk laden events like this launch. For example, finding a way to create a flywheel to drive costs down, or a way to take smaller steps, or a way to incentivize more disposable missions that will build on each other but can tolerate some failures. I’m not an expert but the reason rocketry is moving forward again isn’t because of “move fast and break things” per se but from a rethinking of foundational assumptions in general about how rockets “must” be developed that led to that methodology being discovered as a useful one.
I do agree with this. Most systems have significant basis in unnecessary or outdated methodologies. I think with the JWST project (with partial hindsight), we probably could have benefited from having a "stepping stone" optical telescope after Hubble which we could have used to proof out some of the hard parts of JWST. We learn quite a lot from just running missions beginning-to-end, and extremely long cycle times sacrifice this learning opportunity. It also means that we focus less on developing extensible "platforms" in favor of one-of-a-kind systems which have somewhat less carryover knowledge for the next project. Shorter mission timelines mean that you can better leverage state-of-the-art technology, rather than being forced into a design which constrains you to decade-old technology.
