The problem with this whole new global market-based economy is that expenditure is largely rationalized based on a projected return. This predicament is highlighted in the coming demise of the Concord, where the DSBPI can't help but feel that the human race is going back in time, reverting to an age before supersonic jet travel. By now, at least according to the Newsweek magazines we were reading 15 years ago, we should be traveling from San Francisco to Tokyo in 45 minutes via outer space. Instead, Boeing canned even the pokey Sonic Cruiser, which didn't manage to break the sound barrier anyway, because of paltry demand.

What we are missing is an existential motivation for developing technology that doesn't yet have market applications; the prime example being the Cold War space race, where our drive to beat the Russians put a man on the moon. Years later we realized no tangible benefit from going to the moon per se and stopped; but the space race nonetheless propelled industry and imagination at the cost of billions of dollars that would never have been spent if someone looked at an ROI model.