My folks (they were both scientists also) used to drill into my young, impressionable, self that making it as a scientist was all about asking the right questions. But, the key constraint, was not just the ability to get ask the right question. Rather, it was the ability to have the right tools to answer the question experimentally.
As science has progressed, what we seek to measure, has become smaller and shorter-lived. The gravitational waves from the collision of a pair of black holes, detected by LIGO back in 2015, produced a displacement smaller than the diameter of a proton here on Earth. The machines built to measure that displacement cost something on the order of a billion dollars.
And that example has played out across the entire science waterfront. The phenomena, important as they are to moving science forward, remain ephemeral. You can ask exactly the right question, but the tools to answer your scientific query are expensive.
So why do science then? Aren’t there other more important policy objectives at hand? I would answer that we need to do science for two reasons: first, science delivers concrete practical goods like new medicines and therapies. And second, science allows us to gain knowledge about our place in the universe.
Discoverers and Discoveries 