It's true you couldn't plow money into such a project. But I always wondered why, when confronted with a problem like this, you couldn't hire one smart organizers who hire forty dispersed teams who'd each follow a different lead. And hire another ten teams who'd be tasked with following and integrating the work of the forty teams (numbers arbitrary but you get the picture).

I suppose that's how grants are supposed to work already but it seems these mostly degenerated to all following the intellectual trend with the most currency.