It's reinventing the wheel, all the way down.
Wheels have been improved over many millennia. Were they all pointless? First logs. Then the axle. Then carriage wheels with wooden spokes. Then steel wheels with rubber tires, also with spokes, but light enough for bicycles. Then aluminum wheels, again lightening the rolling weight. And now we’re seeing wheels with integrated suspension systems.
All of these are reinventing the wheel and each is a dramatic improvement over the wheel before it. This is how we make progress, by improving on things from the past.
OSes have not changed much from a conceptual point of view since the 70s. I'd personally like to see more research there.
While Rust is just a tool to help with that development, it does overall lower the cost so that focus can be paid to higher level problems and less paid to memory usage errors.