The moon landing wasn’t just a technological achievement. It was an organizational one. Hundreds of scientists, engineers and astronauts had to coordinate around a goal none of them could carry alone. Same with the early internet - researchers on different continents quietly rewriting their local plans to fit a shared one.
That’s the part that gets lost when we call these ideas “audacious”. The motivation is a side effect. The real function of a big goal is coordination - it forces people to talk to each other because they can’t ship it on their own.
A small, easy goal doesn’t require that. And teams built around small, easy goals quietly stop talking to each other.
A challenging, significant goal is easier to move a team through than an easy, unimportant one.