As a contrived example to my thinking: If it had taken us another 100 years to figure out combustion engines would we all be riding in steam cars? Would the ind

As a contrived example to my thinking: If it had taken us another 100 years to figure out combustion engines would we all be riding in steam cars? Would the industry focusing on building better and better steam cars have been a waste? Would investing millions in developing an engine that was light enough to allow flight in heavier than air vehicles when we already have a dirigible/train/ship network that is perfectly adequate for passenger and good transport. Personally I see this kind of work as needing to find 'new' solutions to realise these kind of blue sky projects. Meanwhile applying ourselves to even quite meaningful works does not give us a new solution to apply to other problems it just fits an existing solution to an unsolved problem. It may benefit us more in the short term to apply the solutions we already have (some times in very novel ways) to solve existing problems but coming up with new ways to apply the same old solution to different areas becomes harder and harder as there are less problems it could apply to and the blue sky research may very much make those solutions, if not obsolete, an inefficient use of effort.