People have always cried that any new exploration is doomed to failure and death. Sometimes they are even right. If Columbus had not chanced to run into the Americas he would have killed off his entire crew.
But people keep flinging themselves into the abyss flapping their arms as hard as they can. It is what is programed into human nature. And mostly we, against all odds, manage to fly.
Before we went to the moon there was a lot of “new evidence” that the lander would sink into the dust that MUST have accumulated on the lunar surface, never to be seen again.