We haven't lost the ambition, it's just that the funding processes have become highly politicized, and once we beat the Godless Communists to the Moon, the politicians felt that we didn't need to do any more research.
Yes, but that assumes intelligent investors willing and capable of analyzing for long term profits. Research science often incurs short (or even long) term loss for an eventual extreme gain. There will be many failures and lots of money spent before that point. It's like a startup, but less clear of a plan for monetization and even longer time to product. Capitalism tends not to support this.
"Cancer Research" and "Energy Crisis" seem to be pretty good sources of funding these days. A lot of labs have small projects/applications in these two fields since it often greatly helps them get funding.
