Heavy Alternative Power Program, Please.

This brief article 'Iron Giant' by Tim Heffernan published at the Atlantic is personally interesting to me, well titled, and a better than average example of why the conservatives in this country consistently miss the point of government.  

The Heavy Press Program as authorized by Congress in 1950 was a military program for sure, but it was enacted by a Democratically controlled congress and supported by a Democratic administration and then nearly cut in half by a Republican congress and administration.  Of the ten forges and extruders that were built, eight or nine of them are still in operation more than fifty years later and the civilian applications and the innovations they allowed have paid for them probably several hundred times over.  Compare the total price tag of $279 million to the balance of our entire aerospace industry.  Even with inflation it was a steal at ten times the price.  Paying for big, expensive projects with uncertain application potentials is what national governments do.  There was no private interest in 1950 that was going to foot the bill to build a 50,000 ton forge press for the US Military, much less nine additional record-breaking presses and extrusion machines simulataneously.  Government invests in the things we need, private sector or no private sector.  

What will it take to get conservatives to see that if we do not invest heavily in our infrastructure and more importantly, the infrastructure of future economies, there's no chance of the big payoff.