Superconductors, buckyballs, artificial diamonds etc are all quite sexy and easy to grasp, so they have a big profile in popular news despite their comparative lack of utility, much more so than (until recently) incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo about mRNA, convoluted neural networks and whatnot.
That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.
> That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.
There are a lot of other directions that materials science is exploring that might turn out to be transformative. Higher energy densities and power densities in batteries and capacitors, weldable ceramics, thin film thermal insulators, electroactive polymers, tunable optical refraction and reflection, biocompatible materials for implants, etcetera, etc.
That said, materials science is vital for incremental improvements like modern composite airplanes or SpaceX rockets etc, and if we ever do get to space elevators or room-temperature superconductors, the potential is life-changing.