Chunnel's inspirational influence

Watching the 'chunnel' clip made me think a bit about one of the big elements of engineering. The question as to whether something actually does help and prove to be a worthy investment of time, money and hard work in the 'long run.'

Nowadays, companies employ statisticians who do this for them, but even with statisticians, it seems with a project this massive and expensive, it's hard to see it 'paying for itself' in years to

come, and the amount of money that will come back from it, but I see a supplementary value in the simple having accomplished a feat of such immense engineering, and simply being able to have the 'we did it' feeling afterwards, and a sense of having reached an international engineering milestone.

I feel like these kinds of projects are those that push us to keep reaching further, and inspire engineers and the engineering discipline as a whole to keep taking steps forward, and look beyond simple engineering of 'what sells.'