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Comment by kyllo | Hacker News Reader

Because the biggest problems are the most expensive problems, and the most expensive problems require the deepest pockets, which belong to the government.

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And when the government opens up its deep pockets, even on reasonable problems (like "low-pollution energy") you get results like Solyndra... or worse, because it's more about chasing government money than coming up with any results.

You could also get results like Germany who has been producing record amounts of solar energy thanks to their push in that direction. There are obstacles we'd have to overcome here to make that a reality here in the US, but it's not impossible.

But you also get Sputnik, Gagarin, Apollo, Voyager. You get microprocessors and Internet. You get nuclear energy (though you will be right to mention industrial fusion reactors which are always 20 years or so away :))

One difference between solar power and Apollo is that the people in the government who did Apollo were worried about the Soviet Union handing our collective rear ends to us, possibly on a radioactive platter. Key stakeholders knew there were consequences for getting it wrong, e.g. their homes and families potentially getting vaporized.

The subsidies for the Solyndra debacle are still viewed by many partisans as a reasonable price for a laudable attempt to do the right thing, instead of a massive waste of capital. Failure? What's that?

I don't know much about Solyndra. But you are right that people getting the money for research need to be honest and motivated. In my opinion, this applies to most people working in science. It is just that research is hard (and possibly getting even harder [1],[2]) and motivation alone is not enough. If you have a "serious problem" to solve, you will most probably need to throw tons of money and people at it.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/02/07/the-difficulty-...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6694932/Have-we-discovere...

You are missing the forest for the trees. The entire technology stack behind you posting something here in HN started at some point as a government-sponsored project.

You are reciting talking points. How about GPS, weather prediction, the highway system?

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