Rubbish! You've actually managed to annoy me with this statement. A grand unified theory is necessary for a true understanding of our world and the advances in this field come from government fuded sources. From the papermate pen and odour eaters to advances in aviation safety, all are derived from government funded space research. In fact NASA alone has filed over 6300 patents in the US and even produces a jounal (Spinoff) that highlights the diffusion of these patents into everyday items. Quantum research has resulted in more efficient fuels, batteries even improvements in the laser technologies used by optical drives. Do I need to go on, I could ram this point home but a google search on the benefits of government research would do just as well. Or try NASA and the Institute Of Physics own websites.
As for commercial ventures, they also give us intensive farming techniques for pigs that have resulted in devastation for many of the US fish stocks and lets not forget philidimide. Never loose sight of the fact that companies serve only to increase cash flow for shareholders, this brings us benefits at times but it also serves to pack our food with chemical crap and make drugs for fictitious mental illness among other ills.
nice so you've given us one of the very few very bright spots in government funded research (nasa) and a couple of the failures of commercial research. In governement research you just have to convince the powers that be that something needs to be studied. It doesn't have to have a point, it doesn't even have to any real application. So researchers go around looking for something to research just to have a job. Moochers is what some people call them.
In commercial R+D it has to have a point, it has to have an application (a way to improve life in some way) You don't see commercial R+D firms studying how much methane cows fart out. Or if greenhouse warming is occuring for decades, with no effort or metod of making a change. No commercial firms study ways to make things better.
I guess what it really comes down to is knowledge verses action. NASA found ways to make planes safer and more efficient. But it isn't NASA that does anything with that knowledge. Its the aircraft companies. And they can't just take that knowledge and make an airplane, they have to do huge amounts of R+D just to use any good idea NASA comes up with.
Much of the federal R+D that you will see outside NASA etc. is pork. Dr. Whatsisname knows a senator and convinces said senator that studying frog anuses is important because they might be getting smaller due to global warming. Senator gets others to go along with Frog Anus studies in exchange for his vote on their bills (more pork) and voilla Dr. Whatsisname gets a $250,000 grant to look up frogs tailpipes.
That is how much federal research grants go. If that money actually went to NASA we would see much more real, important science going on. NASA's budget has been cut almost every single year for decades.
