See Moon landings and the Manhattan project for an example of what unlimited budget and the best brains were able to accomplish in this country between the 40s and 70s. Then it all went way downhill precisely because of this kind of reasoning, utter lack of vision and ambition, and mismanagement. And even if this were an utter and complete failure in the end, it'd have generated priceless knowledge, and hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern civilians would be alive. No matter how you slice it, this would have been a _way_ better way to spend taxpayer money.That's if it were a failure. If it were a success, we'd end global warming, attach a ginormous rocket booster to the world's economy without dooming the planet, kick the stool from underneath several authoritarian/theocratic regimes, and who knows what else.
wolverine876|4 years ago
What makes you say that management and vision declined? NASA does incredible things, as does NIH, NSF, etc.
> this would have been a _way_ better way to spend taxpayer money.
In order to do research, you need freedom, and political and economic stability, and those require militaries - not solely or most importantly, but necessarily. Sometimes militaries will be misused or used inefficiently, but there is no option to just spend all the money elsewhere.
delecti|4 years ago
It's comparatively easy to say that with hindsight. There was about as much reason in 1940 to predict that making a nuclear bomb was feasible with enough resources as there is today to think the same about fusion power generation. Both started from the standpoint of "theoretically possible, but levels and levels of unknown engineering challenges."
leephillips|4 years ago
leephillips|4 years ago