&gt; Sadly, you&#x27;ll be hard-pressed to do direct public funding in anything that is not publicly-attractive.<p>I think this problem can be solved exactly as it is solved in academia. Since technical things are indeed too technical, even many researches do not understand the precise value of a particular research. And this is why a commissions are created and peer-review is used. So the money from ordinary people should go to this commissions instead.<p>Upd: of course such a commission should be able to explain&#x2F;promote the corresponding research to the public. This will be their work, too.