Exploratory engineering
From apm
Wikipedia: [1]
A prime example of succesful extrapolatory engineering in history can be found in the preparations for making low earth orbit and beyond accessible. For uninvolved people without sufficient internal knowledge of the then present technological capabilities it understandably seemd lunatic to want to go to the moon.
Advanced atomically precise technology (APM) suffers from a similar situation. Thus one of the goals of this wiki is to provide such sufficent internal information in a way that's somewhat digestable for the average scientifically interested reader.
Note: It's called exploratory and not extrapolatory engineering which wold make sense too - even more so perhaps. (levenshtein distance: 5)