Reminds me of that Atlantropa plan. The idea was to drain most of the Mediterranean sea to create new land between Europe and Africa. Some German guy came up with it in the 1920s and spent like 20 years trying to convince people it's a great idea and totally doable. Unfortunately everyone was busy with other stuff back then...
The book is about food, but mostly it talks about oxidation of the body and how various foods affect that, because that seems to be the main factor for aging and other degradation of the body. (TL;dr: eat a lot of broccoli)
I'm not an expert though, so cannot judge how accurately the science is presented
Anyway, a prototype is not a bad thing, if the managers know the difference.
It's easier said than done to "do it right the first time" if you don't know how / what to build.
Prototypes can be built to validate hypotheses and generally figure out what works, then build the real thing afterwards.
That's a common misconception. The cybertruck's sails are designed to be pushed by a high-power stream of gasoline, not wind