But they were planning to get to that destination, with the same Apollo program, for years before that...
This example seems a bit of a stretch, which makes me hesitate on the other examples.
And another source of hesitation comes from this parallel: - During Covid, it was said that China built a new hospital in like 8 days, and it was claimed "we can't do that" etc - But then we created a temporary 1000-bed hospital in 7 days: "It was much quicker than we usually design, engineer and construct a project... We worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week with our vertical team to spec out the sites [and] award contracts, and then began work immediately after the contracts were awarded." [1]
[1] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/21...