Exploratory engineering

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 capabilities it understandably seemd lunatic to want to go to the moon.

Advanced atomically precise technology (APM) suffers from a similar situation. This one of the goals of this wiki is to provide such sufficent internal information in a way that's somewhat digestable for the scientifically interested reader.

Note: It's called exploratory and not extrapolatory engineering which wold make sense too - even more so perhaps. (levenshtein distance: 5)