This is an excellent idea - quantizing bits of design information.
It would also demonstrate that if a designer started at the "space shuttle" level of complexity, and layed out a rough design, that design would probably change drastically as the components were built and tested, and the designer collected more bits of information about how to make the complex system work.
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.