Actually, there is a Federal Department of Stopping Cancer - the National Cancer Institute.
But it's got a $5b a year budget which is pretty small in the biotech world. It's even worse when you consider that 42% of it is grant money. So my statement isn't quite right, but in my opinion, still close to right. Maybe 70% true.
http://www.cancer.gov/aboutnci/budget_planning_leg/plan-2013...
http://obf.cancer.gov/financial/factbook.htm
Inflation adjusted NASA's budget during the Apollo program was $30 billion a year or so. And that was in a realm that's better understood.
I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should start spending $50 billion or $100 billion a year on cancer research. But I would argue that it might take that kind of investment to really move the needle in a meaningful way and provide enough good paying opportunities for nerds to get them interested.
Thanks for the link though, even if it makes me look a little dumb.
Fixing government? Yeah you might be able to modernize a lot of the tech stack that runs various governmental entities but you're not going to actually fix the entities. You'll be implementing failed or broken policies in node.js instead of cobol. It's a step in the right direction but it doesn't actually fix the core of what's broken.
Curing cancer? There's no Federal Department of Stopping Cancer, either you work for a big pharmaceutical company or you get a PhD and scramble for grant money.
Rebooting our space program? That happens every administration and it always starts with some kind of dream to do audacious thing X that won't get any significant funding.
Fixing education? I'm not really sure where to start here. You can't fix from within since there's a constant struggle by the administrators to stay in power because teachers don't have any upwards mobility besides administration. And trying to fix it from the outside? That's even tougher, Kahn Academy has some traction with people but little with teachers who fear it'll put them out of work.
Find me something inspiring that's not going to be mired in politics and bullshit and I'm all ears. I don't think any of those are all that inspiring. I'd even deal with less pay for something really impressive.