As long as we're in the mode of pissing away our net worth future, it might be nice to see this modestly funded to proof or failure.

Your throwaway line is really worth a closer look.

That's the real crime. For all the money being printed and floated it's doing nothing of consequence in terms of progress. It's like killing a whole forest just to plug the Santa Maria and keep it afloat perpetually rather than build a whole new world and new cities.

Progress, new technologies, exploration, cutting edge R&D - these things have been ostensibly pushed over the cliff - both by market realities and politicians priorities.

Throw money at a health care system rather than the technologies and R&D that might entirely eradicate whole classifications of diseases.

Throw money at banks instead of directly at the companies making progress. (Tesla Motors being the exception here)

No inspiration in the space exploration and R&D project sector makes for a bleak future as well.

And as for energy - their is a real dearth of nuclear physicists being turned out by our colleges and universities. This is a crippling blow in so many ways. So many avenues of atomic power development await exploration and while fusion is the most long-lived formula/theory for unlimited power, other methods need to be explored as well. And the start begins in the universities and high schools, with young minds who understand the existing nuclear designs and start thinking outside the framework.

I'm convinced if this were like 1944, and the 'longhairs' were still with us, we would already have two more atomic power extraction methods besides fission and fusion on the table. What's more - if the government and people were also more like that past time, we would have, not just interest, intense DEMAND for these things to be funded, developed and put into use.

The next big energy 'solution' will make fortunes like Gates appear all over the world.