And it's certainly worth remembering that a great majority of these technologies we employ are only usable as a result of core research done for pure intellectual curosity. The entire science of electromagnetism was a result of work done solely because somebody thought it was cool. Without it though, kiss pretty much all modern tech goodbye. It's very very hard to tell what eventual results apparently useless basic research will have, and even harder to have any real technolical innovation based solely on focused development. The Queen of England couldn't call in researchers in 1880 and say make me a wireless communication device and get radio. You need the basic research done without any presumptions of economic value to get that.