I don’t really understand how [The bit on Van Gogh – that he was only posthumously appreciated in the art sector] follows from what I said.

My following paragraph is about that. Art often happens before the framework made to create it. In fact, when we have set up studio, they’re already doing knock-offs, trying to repeat prior successes.

For every $1 spent on the moonshots, we got $14

Do you have a source for that?

This came up during a TED talk on the benefits of investing in big science. On an unrelated research effort, I found the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 which Eisenhower signed during his freak out over Sputnik, and the big grant to Fairchild Superconductor which kicked off the electronics boom in Silicon Valley (~San Jose, California), so the $14 value is certainly plausible.