The Wright brothers are idiots, if it were me I'd have made a supersonic jet from the get go and not waste my time mucking around with prototypes.
the Wright brothers sold me a subscription to a supersonic jet and I've got a bundle of matchsticks and some canvas.
We were promised supersonic jets today or very soon though and our economies have been held hostage waiting for that promise.
The prototype phase meant data centers are now measured in MW instead of TFLOPS.
At a time where we were desperate to reduce emissions, data centers now consume around 20% of the energy consumed by the entire aviation sector, with consumption is rising at 15% YoY.
Never mind the water required to cool them, or the energy and resources required to build them, the capital allocation, and the opportunity cost of not allocating all of that to something else.
And this is, your words, the prototype phase.