"If you want to build cheap rockets to space, do it" This is a particularly good example. People have argued that money spent on a space program is essentially

"If you want to build cheap rockets to space, do it" This is a particularly good example. People have argued that money spent on a space program is essentially thrown away, when it could have been spent on fixing poverty. But the space program led to a huge number of advancement from telling us about the North Korean famine, to making little lasers that kill mosquitoes, to better refrigeration, to mobile phones currently providing communication in infrastructure-poor areas of Africa.