Another amusing story has American researchers predicting the timing of the first orbital satellite based on nothing more than extrapolated trends in maximum rocket velocity. They dismissed the prediction, because they didn't think their research project was on track. But sure enough, the first satellite was launched just on time- by the Russians.

There was an article published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact around 1960 (after Sputnik, of course) which basically did this. The graph would lead you to conclude that we'd achieve faster than light travel before the year 2000.

Dismissing predictions like the one you describe was perfectly legitimate, even if it turns out to be wrong. Things that increase on a sigmoid growth curve will increase faster up to a point where they slow down again, and the predictor had no reason to assert that the curve would stay steep for long enough to get a satellite launched, any more than the Analog writer had a reason to assert that it would stay steep for long enough to get FTL.