Most of what we consider "high tech" actually came out of WWII and the Space Race.
Really? Integrated circuits, LCDs, MRIs, the Internet? Digital watches?
WWII did lay a lot of the foundations, but there was a lot of development since.
We're in the last stages now of ideas and technologies that were originated to solve those goals. Now we need new goals.
People have goals just fine. Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Boeing didn't become giants out of nothing. Setting artificial goals simply leads to money being wasted where it isn't most helpful.
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Basic research is of course needed, but if there is no place to focus it, mankind will get bored of it. It's like making national parks but not allowing people to go to them by either telling us we're not allowed to sully their pristine nature or just plain pricing the costs to visit them too high for the average person
. Eventually people will forget about the flora and fauna there and not give a shit if some toad or owl goes extinct. Out of sight, out of mind. (Sorry, no car metaphor.)
Hire a good PR firm. This huge investment just to get people to give you money for spinoffs sounds like a scam.
The same applies for basic research (for the most part). If people can't see it being applied somewhere eventually, they won't give a rat's ass whether funding is cut for it or not. That is what is happening now. To combat this we NEED some place to apply at least some of what we learn in a spectacular way. Then people, average people, the ones who actually pay for most of the research, can actually see some of what they are getting for the money, and how cool that stuff is; and how it is worth it. Even if only a small part is used in a new space race, it will be enough to help pull funding through for all the less glamorous areas of research.
Or you can have real leadership instead.
Stop thinking rationally if you want others to pay for your stuff. They'll only do it if they get something out of it. Directly. In the U.S., national pride is huge. The more you can help fuel that, the more money people will give you. Build a space station. A real space station, not just some "let's stick our toe in the water and do a bit of research" space station.
The ISS is as real as it gets. You only say it's a toy because we put it up and ... nothing happened. If you put a bigger station there, the same nothing will happen. There's no science to be done there that can't be done better by unmanned satellites and probes.
Less of a lab, and more of a one that gives meaning to the word 'station', much like train station, and begins to make space travel routine.
Routine travel where? Mars, where there's nothing, and you have a launch window every two years or so? Other planets, where it's even more impossible to go?
.Use the research to create that in turn to create whole new technological ecosystems (much like the Apollo series did),
What would we do with even more Teflon?
and help keep people interested in science so they'll pay for more. The economic benefit (if it isn't offshored by some cynical self serving idiot) is that America will have technology to sell to the rest of the world that it doesn't yet have. This in turn fuels a healthy economy which can then afford to finance basic research. But only if the economic benefits STAY in the country.
It doesn't work that way. You borrow money to pay large salaries to talented people. They spent it, some of it on imports. You have less talented people in other fields, so you need to import products to fill the gap.
Cool sells. Space stations are cool. A nerd in some back lab is cool to many technology lovers, but even then, not all. And certainly not to most of the rest of society.
How much can you show vids of people floating in a tube? gets boring in 20 seconds. Even the moon landings became boring.
Proof? People pay billions for spoiled sports stars to make millions entertaining them. This gives society a place to vent its anxieties and aggressions (even vicariously). And it is labelled cool and spectacular because it allows those human emotions in full force. Face it, some guy writing equations at a desk, or dolling out solutions from a pipette is pretty dull and boring in comparison. The science that excites is big rocket ships, robots, and risk. Give the crowds what they want, give them Orange Flavoured Tang and Space Opera and they will love you. Give them the spectator sport of science. Then you can pay for basic research. There is a grain of truth even in satire. In this case it is more like a boulder.
Maybe, but space is nothing like that. Only science fiction movies. Space is slow, boring, careful, empty.
