I thought Apollo 11 was the first to the moon, and it struck as odd to accomplish so much on the first go. But it turns out NASA was sensible: one step at a time. A great example for me! And I wonder what else I don't know...
The book "To the moon" goes into quite a bit of detail around the planning and scheduling of the Apollo missions. They took a very iterative approach to getting there, never doing more than they planned but being prepared to do it all.
I thought Apollo 11 was the first to the moon, and it struck as odd to accomplish so much on the first go. But it turns out NASA was sensible: one step at a time. A great example for me! And I wonder what else I don't know...