You’re preferentially remembering programs that came to a successful conclusion. Counterbalance the Apollo Project with Project Pluto, Project Orion, the X-33, and the National Aero-Space Plane, which consumed lots of effort and never resulted in flyable products. Camp Century and the larger Project Iceworm turned out not to be a good idea once they tried it. The Japanese Fifth Generation project was a total washout. Also consider the War on Cancer and the Space Shuttle, which produced results, but far less than the early proponents imagined.
You’re preferentially remembering programs that came to a successful conclusion. Counterbalance the Apollo Project with Project Pluto, Project Orion, the X-33, and the National Aero-Space Plane, which consumed lots of effort and never resulted in flyable products. Camp Century and the larger Project Iceworm turned out not to be a good idea once they tried it. The Japanese Fifth Generation project was a total washout. Also consider the War on Cancer and the Space Shuttle, which produced results, but far less than the early proponents imagined.
None of these seemed like dumb ideas going in.
Do you think there might be a simple difference between the successes and failures here that we could learn from?
If there was a simple difference, it would already have been noticed and acted on.
Some things are easy to notice and hard to replicate