NASA is a great comparison because, although the question of “Who will make it to the moon first?” was then (and remains) largely a simple question of bragging rights, the scientific research involved in the moon landing led to all sorts of things that we hadn’t anticipated but which, now, we couldn’t conceive doing without.
A concerted effort towards making petroleum obsolete may NOT lead to us being 100% free of the stuff, but every little bit helps, not just in an environmental sense but in a foreign policy sense, and who really CAN predict what other benefits might arise? Pure research (and yeah, I INCLUDE research into homosexuality in sheep and so on) is one thing that a centralized, government-led, not-for-profit effort excels at.
I once read that Europeans largely consider “the future” to be something that happens, while Americans consider “the future” to be something we create. What, in the future, WILL be the issues that make the difference between the fortunate and the unfortunate? Energy. Water. Materials. Pollution. But if we think we can continue to have “the Good Life” at the expense of the rest of the world, we’re looking at another 100 years of wars and anti-American rioting.
NASA is a great comparison because, although the question of “Who will make it to the moon first?” was then (and remains) largely a simple question of bragging rights, the scientific research involved in the moon landing led to all sorts of things that we hadn’t anticipated but which, now, we couldn’t conceive doing without.
A concerted effort towards making petroleum obsolete may NOT lead to us being 100% free of the stuff, but every little bit helps, not just in an environmental sense but in a foreign policy sense, and who really CAN predict what other benefits might arise? Pure research (and yeah, I INCLUDE research into homosexuality in sheep and so on) is one thing that a centralized, government-led, not-for-profit effort excels at.
I once read that Europeans largely consider “the future” to be something that happens, while Americans consider “the future” to be something we create. What, in the future, WILL be the issues that make the difference between the fortunate and the unfortunate? Energy. Water. Materials. Pollution. But if we think we can continue to have “the Good Life” at the expense of the rest of the world, we’re looking at another 100 years of wars and anti-American rioting.