[Mohoender]

You are right about the fine line. That's why I said pure invention no improvements or applications. In fact, what I truly think is that people are inventing new things almost every day (small ones and big ones). The true problem will be that our current society will not finance them thinking that their ideas are either too risky or too expensive (after all they are fools). Even the new exemples that you gave are mostly from the early 1960's (for the most recent ones).

Synthetic Fibers (artificial silk 1799)
Lazer Technology (Einstein 1917, 1950 for a working one)
FIBER OPTICs (principle 1840, 1952 for a working one)
MASS COMMUNICATION <the ability to transfer massive amounts of data> (field of study not an invention)
Micro Dot (working process in 1870, WWI and WWII...)
Space Tavel (working process 1919, V2 in space in 1942, sputnik 1957)
Deep Sea Exploration (first working instrument 1840, lowest ocean point at 10911m, Jacques Piccard in 1960, nothing more ever since)
Deep Space Exploration (1957-1976, no program since that time outside of probes)
Reusable Space Vehicle (probably)
Modern metalurgy (to vast a domain as you said)

As a result we do a lot of research to improve the existing. Why starting an all new concept we just need to improve the old ones. If you go to people they are inventive, many have talents (if not all) and they are often dedicated. That's why I agree with HQ when he says that everything at the end will be fine.

I grew up dreaming about Mars and whatching Outlands. I woke up recently to learn that U.S. will stop actively participate in the international space program (too expensive). In the meantime, chinese have made a missile that can destroy sattelites (2005), they are sending people into space, they plan to land on the moon, they have organized olympics games for the handicaped that matched the normal one (almost no images of it), the Russians are selling Europe Soyuz, Iran sent a sattelite in orbit... I happen to hope being Chinese and I don't like that idea.

A friend of mine who died last year told me some times before that our society is not collapsing. He argued that it already collapsed some 40 or 50 years ago, stating that we just don't know about it. He had a good chance to be right but that doesn't mean the end. There is a good chance that we will go for a new start but it might be good not to wait too long. It's nice to finance the banks but he might be wiser to finance "Joe the Plumber" to put it as your candidates did. I would think that we baddly need some Openheimer, Einstein, Ferdinand Porsche, Clement Ader, Wrights brothers...