If I may, that's what the American government did with Samuel Pierpont Langley in giving him the largest-ever war department grant for R and D. He produced an aircraft that shot up in the air, shot down into the Potomac River, and lodged in mud, at which point he gave up and said his life was a failure.
The Wright brothers, by contrast, funded all of their R and D from the proceeds of their bicycle repair shop, had zero government help, and produced, for one-seventieth of the cost, the first heavier-than-air powered, piloted aircraft ever. That would seem to contradict what you're saying.
By the way, they didn't even have a college education, whereas Pierpont Langley was the third secretary, I think, of the Smithsonian.
So sometimes these things do sprout from the ground, don't they?