Sentence:  Chazelle and Singer acknowledge both the impressive resourcefulness and faintly insane <WSD>overreach</WSD> of the space race; they were winging it, attempting the impossible with relatively primitive technology—“Boys making models out of balsa wood,” Janet calls them, after Director Of Flight Operations Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler) cuts the radio feed during a mission gone wrong. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The act of extending or reaching too far, overextension.