Comment by analog31

That's a good question, and I'd also add the Manhattan Project, the NIH, the NSF, NOAA, Fermilab, NIST, NCAR, and academic research including the state "land grant" universities. Every complex system has failure modes, but there must be success stories to learn from in all of those programs.

Disclosure: My education was funded by NSF, and I now work for a company that sells stuff for government funded research, though not exclusively.