LogFAQs > #878316745

COVxy posted...

Darkman124 posted...

well, more accurately, no short-term profit motive.

I guess it depends on how you're conceptualizing science, as an enterprise or as a discrete set of units called experiments. I was think like the latter, meaning the only experiments with a profit motive are the last in the string that develop the application. The reason I stated it like this is because the labs that do the first set of experiments are most often an entirely different group than those who do the applied work. Meaning that funding the first basic steps is not only indirect in terms of the particular experiment, but also the people.
But we're in complete agreement, really.

we are. i definitely have the enterprise view.

some chemist 50 years ago discovered you could concentrate light metals in solid propellants and got a nice university grant in hamburg or some shit.

now raytheon sells a design based on his work for 100 million dollars a missile

kill all humans
---

And when the hourglass has run out, eternity asks you about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.