A society that never invests in research into anything that in hindsight was obviously silly, is also going to miss out on a bunch of things that looked unpromi

A society that never invests in research into anything that in hindsight was obviously silly, is also going to miss out on a bunch of things that looked unpromising but actually paid off in a big way. I'm glad NASA investigated the reactionless drive recently, even though I was pretty sure it would come to nothing. We need more willingness to finance far-out research projects, not less.