Look, Clayton, I know that the space program, as well as some military programs, provided the initial impetus for the development of the monolithic transistor. But answer the question. If the space program hadn’t have happened, would we still be using vacuum tubes now?
Also,
A similar effort to research new energy technologies would almost certainly give us enormous benefits.
Were you around in the ’70s? Carter threw all kinds of unfocused research money at energy. What did we get that was usable? Not much, and nothing that wouldn’t have been funded by the private sector, anyway.
The one huge lost opportunity was ditching fission technology. Imagine if the industry had remained viable, and R&D (primarily private sector) had continued over the past 40 years. We’d certainly be doing pebble-bed on a widespread basis now, and possibly molten salt thorium cycles. We’d certainly be reprocessing most of our waste instead of stacking it up like we’re doing now. But that was a case of the government, at the behest of ideologue activists, standing in the way of technology.
