The Superconducting Super Collider would have been over three times the size of the Large Hadron Collider that discovered the presence of the Higgs Boson aka "God particle" this week giving us possible insight to the Big Bang. The Superconducting Super Collider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia would have been 54 miles - not 17 miles long, but canceled in 1993 for budget reasons. It would have been just south of Dallas. This is part of a long-term trend over the past half-century of America pulling back on R&D - undermining one of the things that made it a superpower. We were better off raising our children to be engineers and scientists than bankers and investors...we need both, but unless we can continue to innovate, we have nothing to sell. Higgs boson For Dummies – LiterallyPolitical News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View | Political News and Opinion from a Multicultural Point of View
If it doesn't blow something up, we're not interested in funding the R&D. The U.S. has a notoriously horrid education system (tied with Latvia in math? Really?), but unfortunately, the Republicans and the Democrats have two completely opposite ways of fixing that, so nothing will get done, so those scores aren't going to go up any time soon.
The US SuperCollider was canceled four years into the still going on 21 year Middle East oil war started in 1990. We do have $400B in WWII aircraft carriers floating around. Would you trade USS Ronald Reagan or the USS George H. W Bush for the super collider? Actually US had a notoriously good public education system that is still pretty good, ranking 17th in the world overall per OECD 2010 rankings. It has certainly been under pressure the last 30 years with a fairly relentless attack on public education in general and teachers in particular. Many of the "public" workers laid off have been teachers with many class sizes jumping from 10 to 30 kids.
In a second. It's the reading that saves us (surprisingly). Sort it by math or science and watch our ranking plummet (although in the latter we're still admittedly above average. Barely, but it still counts).
I'm going to present a counterpoint. One of the most serious problems with Science funding is a few super mega projects destroying the funding for thousands of extremely worthwhile smaller scale projects. At best, the SSC would have discovered the Higgs Boson. It definitely would have wiped out a great many science advances in other areas. The same thing is happening right now in the fusion world. The US is eliminating a great many medium scale fusion research efforts to fund a few mega projects. In science, putting all your bets on one horse is a proven loser. In the end, the SSC was like building the world's tallest building. Bragging rights and wide publication would follow, but getting the most science for the money is not achieved.
But in the context of a $15T US economy that spends $1.4T on military per year with no justifying threat, a $15B investment in high end particle physics is not a "mega project". It's the choice between a USS Ronald Reagan and leading the world in science and technology.
Having seen the stagnation and costs associated with the Space Shuttle, I don't see "big science" as being the best use of funds. The Shuttle 'ate the budgets' and innovation was lost. So I'm not sad at all to see them go to museums. As much as I enjoy visiting aerospace museums, I have no illusions about the technology compared to what we have today and on the drawing boards for tomorrow. We just can't afford to eat the seed corn of innovation by these massive programs. We sent two rovers to Mars and one is still running while to other eventually got into a 'sand trap.' They were both only supposed to last 90 days. Because of their extended operation, I got to do some innovative, network things that cut costs while delivering performance . . . they didn't get the 'expensive' mission network design rules to eat their budget. Sad to say, we only sent one follow-up rover and it will hopefully land early in August (August 9th if I remember correctly.) The newer, bigger one will . . . if it lands OK . . . give us a wealth of information. But its landing is by no means a sure thing. Bob Wilson
If we actually knew what the SSC would discover, we wouldn't need it. I'd happily spend $15B of your money (and mine, to be sure,) to find out what it would discover beyond the Higgs boson. Richard
On March 11, 2011 the Japanese people had no use for a supercollider. The USS Ronald Reagan on the other hand . . . priceless. There are many other examples of real world benefits from these carriers. I'd rather concentrate on waste from useless and stupid government policies such as the $1 Trillion dollar failed stimulus or QE1, QE2 and the upcoming QE3. How many super colliders could we have had for the trillions wasted on these jackass programs?
U.S. Contribution to LHC: On Budget and Ahead of Schedule http://www.uslhc.us/files/factsheets/large_hadron_collider.pdf US/LHC - Large Hadron Collider U.S. contributes to Large Hadron Collider - UPI.com Joe Incandela http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html New Particle Resembling Long-Sought Higgs Boson Uncovered at Large Hadron Collider: Scientific American The US has contributed and continues to contribute greatly to the research done at the LHC. Just because we dont have a "bigger" collider than the LHC does not mean we are not contributing or performing research there. How many giant particle accelerators does the world need? If you can get past the spin of "aircraft carriers" and all of the other BS posted here so far, you will be able to see that the LHC is a tool that is being used jointly by the world, and just because we don't have our own doesn't mean we are not benefiting from it's use.
I know R&D money at everything is not always a good idea, and maybe dropping the SSC to be a partner on the LHC was a good thing, but still concerned in the overall R&D expenditures in recent decades.
The Shuttle, the Super Collider, the space station, are not "big science" because space program overall is such a small part of US budget, less than one half of one per cent of US budget. That is SMALL science. Pathetically small science. When Apollo was going full blast NASA's budget was 5% of US budget. Today "big science" as you call it is $17B, 0.48% of US budget. Less than the cost of one (out of ten) fully equipped US nuclear powered aircraft carrier. The Shuttle "ate" nothing. NASA was and is on a starvation diet while US spends $1.4T per year on military to defend US from Russia and China who spend $300B combined. The productive economic return on tanks, carriers, jets is ZERO. The productive return on space science technology is huge. Here is a quote from the man who pushed for a civilian NASA to be 5% the US budget.
Here is a NASA piece about this: "Eisenhower wanted to limit the new agency’s ambitions; he did not want to create another large bureaucracy competing for a share of government funds. ... When Eisenhower learned in the last months of his presidency that NASA was thinking about sending people to the moon as part of its long-range plan, he was strong in his view that such a use of public resources could not be justified. ... "
