In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump suggested something much bigger, bolder, and better than he probably realized. If both political parties can catch on to it, there's a wide-open pathway to a win that will make Americans more prosperous for decades to come.

What he said is that we would plant the American flag on Mars. Let's unpack that. It means that Trump was committing to the current U.S. plan to send humans in about 10 years. But there's a ton of science to do first: NASA is currently pursuing innovations in the air, food, water, power, shelter, spacesuits, and communications that astronauts will need. So, what that really means is that the federal government needs to keep funding research and development (R&D) in next-generation telecommunications and computing equipment, materials science, botany, and electricity generation and storage; and Trump just declared that he's all in on that.

And that is amazing.

Because here's a dirty little secret about the United States government: it is great at this kind of thing. In fact, funding science is the single most successful thing that the American government does or has ever done.

The last time we made this kind of major push on space technology was the 1960s moon shot. All that did was create the modern world. Everything in computing from the chip to the mouse came from that American taxpayer-funded science. So did a staggering range of technology from camera phones to CAT scans, LED lights to sneakers, home insulation to headsets, artificial limbs to smoke detectors.

It's the same story everywhere you look: when Americans invest in basic scientific R&D, the returns are astonishing. The Human Genome Project brought back an economic return of 141:1–that is, for every tax dollar put in, the U.S. economy generated $141. Just a tiny fraction of our grandparents' tax........

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