I understand that argument, and it is usually in the context of the folly of quarterly results in the private sector, which is a far cry from six years and twenty five years.
Regardless, back to my question, what needs to change to support all the other researchers toiling away right now that won't gain any consensus or utility till the year 2050.
Government funding? More "charity" from billionaires?
Our society has plenty of money to support people like her and her research. That's the point of the academy in the traditional sense: not a vocational school, but a gateway to new understandings of the world.
We need a mindset of doing research for its own sake rather than just as a way to profit. What profit could come of going to the moon? Yet we developed many technologies along the way.
Realistically, the funding would probably need to come (and already does come) from the government. The government should be funding manned missions to Mars and investing much more in longshot technologies like nuclear fusion, to name a couple obvious ones.
Regardless, back to my question, what needs to change to support all the other researchers toiling away right now that won't gain any consensus or utility till the year 2050.