That's correct. No one can know in advance what developments will result from basic research. Science is being advanced on all fronts all the time and it isn't something that can be ordained to proceed in a particular direction by politicians nor by scientists themselves.
If there is a goal, the activity, while appearing similar to science as seen from outside, is development and falls in the area of engineering. If there is no specific goal, the activity is research, in the area of science.
So where is the ISS? Is it science or engineering, is it research or development? Looks like pure development, no science, but with a particularly weak goal. There is little pure science going on in the ISS due to several factors, one of which is the expense of operating the Space Shuttle. But the development work, engineering, has no objective aside from the exercise.
The space engineers, small in number, are keeping their expertise at a high level. Maybe some day they will have an actual ambitious mission such as building a moon base or a Mars base or asteroid mining. Until then they are doing calesthenics--keeping their sliderules limber.
The Rabbi's right.
I don't know why people aren't more shocked when a terrorist criminal shoots an eight-year old girl in the back with his IDF-issued machine gun or uses an army tank to knock down a house full of civilians in the West Bank. I really don't.
More people should be concerned with this problem but they aren't. Maybe if the eight year old girl or the 69 year old grandmother were astronauts, somebody might actually give a damn...