2. Could you develop the same technology more cheaply, without building huge science experiments? No. Of course not. Who would spend their whole career perfecting some obscure device if there wasn't a chance of participating in a great discovery? Industry just can't generate that kind of motivation.
To agree with you, I would say we've seen the example of Industry's idea of advancement in the automobile industry: The major manufacturers kept making almost solely gasonline-only vehicles with only minor incremental advancements until they were required by legislation to make alternatives available to the public, and when they whined about how much it would cost, the (North American) governments gave them subsidies for these new lines of vehicles...
...That is, until an outsider decided to enter the market and shake things up with a huge divergence from the norm.
I don't think we can trust Industry to make the kinds of advancements we need to be able to continue the improvement of our understanding of Science at an acceptable rate. If we left it to Industry, we'd still be riding horses to get around.