My brother is a researcher in evolutionary biology. I have seen how the Bush administration has been sabotaging funding into this area over the last few years. Science should be a free for all of ideas, not influenced by politics, religion, or anything else except good hard science.
How much of the $700b will be left over after you've developed the sentient robots needed to staff this place? ;)
I'd start with a couple billion to the first company to achieve sustainable low-cost access to low Earth orbit.
I'd also hand out lesser amounts to p+B11 fusion projects (EMC2 and there's another one I can't remember right now), to fund their research, with maybe $5B to the first to get a 1GW commercial plant on-line.
Really? No bias? How about this: you'd be a sucker. People apply for grant money and are rejected because the grants are often terrible. Sure, sometimes good grants get rejected, but, overall, the review system is pretty functional. I don't know much about NSF in particular, but if they reviewed grant proposals and then gave out money without passing judgement on quality, they'd be wasting a whole lot of money. And you'd really have to remove all judgement if you wanted a system where all academics are equal. So, judgement is back. Now, tell me this: now that we're judging, can we really keep ideological bias out?
You have to remember that grant money can pay salaries. If you give it out to anyone, people will abuse it.
You make a valid point about the Bush administration, though.
In fact, $700b is more than enough to do this several times over, so the surplus will probably go to funding a century of other programs related to exploration, bioengineering, green technology, and other sustainable development projects.
Seriously, what could it be other than this?