> [...] instead of doing blue-sky research.

In 1921 the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein won a Nobel, was blue-sky research with no practical applications. Fast forward a few decades and it was used as the basis for making laser: you know, those things that all modern communication uses to transfer information over long distances.

While it is up to debate how much to spend on "blue-sky research", cutting off funding to 'basic science' is rather short-sited as we cut off future 'practical' developments that can improve our lives if we don't have the foundations of the basics to build on.

Well, that's a bit of a strawman. There are very few people who think we shouldn't spend any money on blue sky research. It's more of a question of how much we should spend, which blue sky research we should fund, and how those projects are set up. There are neuroscientists who are critical of the Human Brain Project, not because they're against funding of neuroscience in general, but because they don't think this particular project isn't well designed. There are people that are supportive of a lot of the work NASA does, but don't think human space flight specifically is a good use of their budget.