When was peace time?

I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Van Allen 10 years ago or so, and he touched on some of this. He spoke about how the personnel they picked up post-war (von Braun for one) and all of the rocket tech advanced space science was decades beyond where it would have been, relative to "normal" development.

In a world war it's easier to sell the idea of redirecting time and tax dollars to the war machine, where in peacetime most of the R&D now comes from industry making things that will them a profit. You don't need a war to have a golden age of technological advancement and it's not optimal to do so. It's just that otherwise the sense of urgency isn't there.

Broader scientific research isn't something people prioritize when they're going about their daily routine, dealing with gas prices and so on. Most of the technology people we think of make gadgets and computers today. Check out some old Time magazines or even catch some black and white TV shows from the 60s, like What's My Line? Science (and scientists) were much more in the public eye and respected. Now--at least in the US--most people aren't interested unless you can put it in this years' cell phone.

So I guess my thesis would be that advancement is only dependent on (a) resources, and (b) public and political will. Wartime doesn't create any more of a, just more of b. The trick is how to drum up b in peacetime, which seems tough to do.