Invest In Military and Space Technology?

Just after leaving my laboratory job, I worked for a company where I was asked to create a way to run a missile simulation for the U.S. government. At that point in time, computer technology was extremely limited - in fact the computers did not have "virtual" memory. We had about 8 to 16 kilobits of addressable memory per application (talk about efficiency!) So I called up DEC and asked if they had anything that would allow me to use or address multiple memory segments. They said no, but if I figured it out to call them back. So I researched the technology and created a master controller program that allowed memory to be controlled by one segment that swapped and shared memory across multiple segments while code waited until information was ready, executed and wrote back to memory. After I created this, I wrote up the design and published it internal to the government. I called DEC back and told them that I was able to do it but couldn't release the information. DEC did a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and got the detailed technical description and the rest is history. The VAX computer was born and today programs use virtual memory like it was never an issue. (Look at how much memory the Microsoft operating systems use!) Would this technology have been created without this investment by the government? Probably yes but maybe not quite as quickly. We certainly wouldn't be where we are today. I have a lot of past examples of technology from the sector.

Question: Should we invest in military and space technology? Or should we dump it all and focus on commercial applications? Let me know what you think.

If you have technology that started off in the military / space technology sector but you think it needs to move into the commercial sector - I'd like to know about it. If you have commercial technology you think should go into the government - also let me know.