@SamUpstate you've hit a good point here that I've often tried to bring up.

The moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s (NASA has plenty of such examples, but AT&T Bell laboratories are another source of engineering marvels) were possible because in that age pumping tons of public money into moonshots without thinking of immediate profitability wasn't seen as a communist act.

If you let engineers focus on building the best possible thing, with no pressure from stakeholders, demos, MVPs, short deadlines, monetization, VC funds drying out etc., they will build the best possible thing.

But you need public money in order to achieve that - and a lot of it.