>Pretty much all space programmes prior to the commercialisation of space. We're only at the start of that, too: today imaging satellites and internet connections, tomorrow potentially heavy industry, solar power generation and mineral extraction. Who knows what else.
Those had *direct* benefits at the time, immediately: satellites of all kinds, classified military stuff, and the dickwaving pleasure of putting a man on the moon before the Soviets.
The comparison to space would make sense if we spent billions of dollars building a single large rocket starting in 1950, finally launched it in 1975, with a payload of nothing but styrofoam. Then tried to justify it by saying that by 1990 we'll have something useful.
Even then, the space programme was a decadent swamp of pork-barrel spending and vanity project scams like the Space Shuttle and the SLS. I severely doubt that the benefit to humanity outweighed the money spent and lives lost on that crap.
The problem with saying "the benefits just take a really long time to come about" is that it's completely unfalsifiable, at least within the lifetimes of the people who profit from the funding today. They can just dangle that "second-order benefits" carrot in front of the rest of us suckers until they retire.
An interesting article, but rather undercut by the fact that he highlights quantum computers as the same situation. Twelve years later, they exist. They work. They have APIs! Yet the development process displayed all the negative symptoms he highlights. How can we be confident fusion is different?
Those had *direct* benefits at the time, immediately: satellites of all kinds, classified military stuff, and the dickwaving pleasure of putting a man on the moon before the Soviets.
The comparison to space would make sense if we spent billions of dollars building a single large rocket starting in 1950, finally launched it in 1975, with a payload of nothing but styrofoam. Then tried to justify it by saying that by 1990 we'll have something useful.
Even then, the space programme was a decadent swamp of pork-barrel spending and vanity project scams like the Space Shuttle and the SLS. I severely doubt that the benefit to humanity outweighed the money spent and lives lost on that crap.
The problem with saying "the benefits just take a really long time to come about" is that it's completely unfalsifiable, at least within the lifetimes of the people who profit from the funding today. They can just dangle that "second-order benefits" carrot in front of the rest of us suckers until they retire.
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/spotting-vapor...