Moore's Law has been sort of a special case in that it arguably functioned as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "What do we need to do so that, in two years or so, we'll hit what Moore's Law would predict?"

But, as you suggest, the same general patterns apply to a lot of things. You know what you want to do. You have some idea of what you need to do to get there and how hard it's going to be. So people who have experience in such matters can make (usually) reasonable estimates of how quickly they can get there--even if they're (also usually) often optimistic. Because you're more likely to run into hiccups than unexpected breakthroughs.