Shift in Focus as Technology Matures: Lessons from Aviation and Space Exploration

As a technology matures, the focus tends to shift from qualitative achievements, such as who was the first individual or organization to achieve a certain goal, to more quantitative measurements.

It required the decades of boring but important and sustained development in jet aviation from the 1950s to today to lower the cost of transatlantic air travel while simultaneously improving safety standards.

Unlike the situation with aviation, there have not been significant advances in cost reduction; NASA's Artemis program, for instance, is estimated to require tens of billions of dollars to perform a single such mission.