Let me answer maybe partially by telling you about a particular kind of moon shot that happened recently around what's called a cell atlas. It was about mapping out what different cells in different organisms were doing. This is of interest to both academics and the pharmaceutical industry. By the way, this project was led by somebody who's now heading Genentech, which is one of the big biotechs.
The way this happened was fairly decentralized. There was not just a single source of funding. Scientists from around the world met together and tried to define their thoughts on how they should join forces and what the big questions were, and they drafted proposals for what should be funded and what efforts should be made. Then different organizations and different researchers in different countries went after their funders and convinced them to fund them for these things.
The important thing was that it was coordinated internationally, so all the results were put together and made available to the whole scientific community.
This is interesting. It is more organic, in a sense. Instead of having one big funder that decided everything, it came about because of a consensus of scientists thinking that this was important and that these were the different things that needed to be done. Then individual groups went after their funders—philanthropy or government—to fund different parts of it. This has been an immense success.