I've never heard this before, but it is a good quote. One of the problems that people don't understand about funding research for new science is that... it's n

I've never heard this before, but it is a good quote. One of the problems that people don't understand about funding research for new science is that... it's new science. People don't always know exactly what will happen or come of it. It could be an expensive lesson on how not to do things, or it could be an exercise of the mundane, but even the spectacular failures can bring about paradigm shifting change. More importantly, people come to believe that there is often only one goal of any mission and often dismiss the collateral benefits from attempting to solve a really hard problem, especially because they are often hard to truly quantify.