"a society-wide need" sounds like as good an incentive for private investment as any business could hope for. Isn't that how we get cars and houses?

Kinda. Private firms invest in R&D when they believe it will yield a product. "Pure" science is the best example of research that will likely never see private interest, at least in the near future.

Things are a little different in b_b's case because of the way the medical marketplace is structured. It's a mess. Let's go to space instead.

Example: Oxygen's role in Earth's plasmaspheric currents. As far as I'm concerned, the only justification for delving into such a thing is cuz it's purdy cool. In the next couple centuries we may pull from studies like this one in developing technologies to harvest energy from or navigate around near-Earth space, but good luck convincing a private entity to invest in something that it likely won't survive to utilize.

"The Apollo program indeed produced real-world benefits, but at a tremendous cost."

Are you indifferent to the fact that people paid for the Apollo program whether they wanted to or not, whether they benefitted or not? It seems like a lot of people are indifferent.

Conspiracy theorists aside, you'd probably be hard-pressed to find many people who feel like the Apollo missions were a waste of money. Not many people benefited monetarily, but just about everyone was pretty damn thrilled that we did it. They're still thrilled. You could say the same concerning any number of vaccines that were developed from federal grants. I'm not sure what that number is, but it probably isn't high enough.

I'm pumped that the general public is currently less than satisfied about the state of NASA's budget. That means I'll probably have a job when I finish school. I do wish there was a more general concern about the state of science in the U.S., but yeah. It's also my duty to instill a general excitement for science, so I guess I have work to do there too.

More rambling here.

Also, Re: 'The Entrepreneurial State' - Nice post, it was before my Hubski infancy. Quantifying risk is pretty difficult (and subjective), but we all know it usually correlates inversely with reward. My scenario of "(pure) science for the sake of science" is something that should be decided by taxpayers, via their representatives. Ah, but that system is almost entirely broken.

I wish they would pay for my mortgage.

You and every other citizen. Totally different problem, but I'm with you.

Edit: In hindsight, I got way too far off the subject material of the mother post. Sorry guys, I will be striving not to do the same in the future.