Apologies for the tangents away from NASA - I was just replying to one of the parent comments that mentioned medical research

I don't think all research is worthwhile; I think grant proposals should get shot down if the lab/idea isn't up to snuff.

I'm happy for companies to do R&D! There's lot of examples over the years (Bell labs, Google, etc). I just don't think it makes sense in high risk situations with long reward lag times.