cold war was : Cray1 4558

Eugene Miya Our productivity kept well up into the late 60s when 0. European and Japanese economies had recovered to where they could easily compete 1. Vietnam war limited the government funding available for general research 2. We realized that we didn't need significant new launch capacity 3. MacNamara decided we didn't need to have a new jet design every year, and that it might (it largely didn't) make sense for the 4. Reduced need for nuclear weapons funding once we learned how to research Debt Reduction in computer funding

increase in funding that largely disappeared when results were disappointing and the oil shocks receded.

Nuclear research was further badly hurt by Three Mile Island.

Since then major research areas have not shown economic benefits: 1. Fusion has made great advances, but the time to practicality seems to be eternally 20 years from now, and the projected size of the minimal profitable fusion system has increased to where projected capital costs are unacceptable 2. High energy physics finds new effects at particle energies so large they can never have applications 3. High temperature superconductivity becomes interesting, but founders on the poor structural properties of ceramics for most potential applications.

The main research bright spots have been computers and semiconductors, but as we approach physical limits how long will those bright spots last?