Who is "we"? Fracking was funded with private money. It was "conventional" technology, no edge-of-science stuff, so private entrepreneurs could afford it, and the rewards were quick to materialize.
Nuclear fusion? There's this urban myth that fusion could have been achieved if only we'd have poured more money into it, but where's the evidence? Plasma modeling requires a lot of computational power. What you have now in your iPhone in your pocket you could not have had for 10 billion dollars back in 1970. How much money were we supposed to put into fusion research? Do you think with lots of money and just a slide rule, you can solve the fusion problem?
I think you're mistaken about the government involvement in fracking. Sure, the basic technique may have been developed by private companies, but government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications.
> government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications.
The Government gets involved in a lot of things, but it doesn't mean its contribution is essential. For a recent example, the NIH is claiming the Moderna vaccine is due to their contribution, and sure, you'll be able to find one or a few grants here or there of a few hundred thousand dollars, but the massive investments of tens of millions of dollars were done by Moderna itself.
As for fracking, the father of fracking is considered to be George P. Mitchell [1].
You're right, but I think it was essential in this case:
"
His comment that “the DOE started it” refers to the Eastern Gas Shales Project, a research effort in the Appalachia Basin from 1979 that proved shale rock was rich in natural gas. The DOE-supported project tested the use of nitrogen foam to fracture shale formations, and its analysis led to a deeper understanding of natural shale fractures.
George Mitchell’s team studied those results while developing the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, the first modern fracking play. The company relied on research from the Sandia National Laboratory to use micro-seismic technology to map the shale fractures in wells, and Mitchell also benefited from federal tax credits for unconventional drilling, which helped underwrite the cost of developing hydraulic fracturing.
"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/31/how-much...
I interpreted that as meaning "don't forget private industry had an important role". This doesn't mean that the private sector could have done it alone (my interpretation of government investment being essential).
But at that stage it's semantics really.
Maybe we could ask the question: "would private industry have funded all the basic research to get to the same starting point?" I doubt it since it would not have been shown returns for many decades and had a high risk of showing no returns. But maybe they would have, who knows?
A parallel question: "would private industry have developed semiconductor transistors without WW2 research into radar systems?
Nuclear fusion? There's this urban myth that fusion could have been achieved if only we'd have poured more money into it, but where's the evidence? Plasma modeling requires a lot of computational power. What you have now in your iPhone in your pocket you could not have had for 10 billion dollars back in 1970. How much money were we supposed to put into fusion research? Do you think with lots of money and just a slide rule, you can solve the fusion problem?