Is that a lot? On what basis could we decide?(1) I am not saying it isn't, I am just saying it is a rather subjective call which sort of looks at the prior pace of discoveries and extrapolates a judgement.
(1) it took more than that from the first gravitational wave detector to an actual discovery
I'm going to start repeating myself in separate replies here.
Einstein didn't predict gravitational waves as a standalone theory. Gravitational waves are a prediction of General Relativity. General Relativity was shown to be plausible based on data already at hand and data they could collect.
Gravity waves and lensing and frame dragging all confirm what we already suspected to be true. Which is good and bad news because they increase the corroborating evidence for an existing theory, and they take out huge chunks of opportunity for some other theory to explain the same phenomenon but introduce new loopholes or consequences that let us do new things like build Foundation power supplies (nuclear reactors the size of gumballs) or FTL travel or explain why galaxies move 'wrong'.
Physics is not scifi. As the good professor might say, its stranger and always more surprising than the bizarre combinatorial pseudoscience our brains might concoct in the absence of experimental guard rails.
Is that a lot? On what basis could we decide?(1) I am not saying it isn't, I am just saying it is a rather subjective call which sort of looks at the prior pace of discoveries and extrapolates a judgement.
(1) it took more than that from the first gravitational wave detector to an actual discovery