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The human genome project. Their goal when starting was "this will take 15 years", they completed it in 13. The Apollo program: goal of less than 9 years (end of

The human genome project. Their goal when starting was "this will take 15 years", they completed it in 13. The Apollo program: goal of less than 9 years (end of the decade) when it was proposed in 1961 to land a man on the moon and return him to Earth, completed in 1969. If you go back quite a ways, I'm willing to bet at least some of the innovation-required Castles and Cathedrals and Pyramids of history were completed "on schedule" with it known up front that they would take many years to finish. I suspect a lot of projects are accurately classified as 10-30 years away, given a certain level of funding and a dedicated team. Absent that, they may very well take twice as long or more. I always like to see what these long-term oriented institutions like SENS and MIRI say they would do if they had x times more money, to see that they've got a plan -- fortunately those ones do give that information.

scottlocklin 11y ago
Neither of these numbers is equal to or greater than 20. 20 is a "I don't know how to do this" number of years. 10 is building a dam. Quantum computing has already been "a thing" for longer than 20 years; careers have been made ... people have retired. Today we get news of 1 bit worth of progress made since 2001. Now we can factor 30 instead of 15....
- mattlutze 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost The LHC was approved for construction start in 1995. The wiki article doesn't capture it but you can bet the science behind the design of the LHC wasn't all done the year before. It didn't achieve its first real goals until 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO LIGO was dreamed up in the 1960's to detect gravitational waves. Took until 2002 to get the first one built big enough to theoretically detect them, and until 2015 to finally get measurements demonstrating the existence of waves. Real science is slow. This "20 years means I don't know" business is indicative of perhaps not appreciating the difference between basic science and applied science/engineering. I know we're used to engineering projects pumping out new awesome tech every couple years, but basic science is hard and takes a long time.
  - scottlocklin 11y ago
    Ligo was most certainly not dreamed up in the 1960s, and the LHC was completed in 10 years. I picked the word "technology" instead of "science" on purpose. Science isn't slow or fast; it can't be predicted at all. Technologies; different story. Someone says I'm going to build you a piece of technology and it will take 20 years, that means they don't know how to do it. There are no exceptions.
drjesusphd 11y ago
> I suspect a lot of projects are accurately classified as 10-30 years away, given a certain level of funding and a dedicated team Precisely. Take fusion for instance: http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg This is the source of the "joke" that fusion will always be 20 years away. It's because it's been grossly under-funded ever since that prediction was made.
- Trundle 11y ago
  This is really interesting! Have you read the source report? I'm curious as to why/how the predicted required budget would fluctuate so much. For such a specialised and frontier based project, surely you'd be aiming for consistent staffing (and thus consistent staff budgets) year on year no?
  - drjesusphd 11y ago
    My guess is that is fluctuates because there are a discrete number of new experiments to be constructed, and these don't cost a constant amount during their construction.
    - LeifCarrotson 11y ago
      That was my guess as well. Looking at the graphs, there are about three clear peaks in the maximum, accelerated, and aggressive plans, muddled out a bit in the moderate plan. What are these three experiments? Which of them have already been done in the existing plan? And what others might need to be added? Also curious is the expected total cost. Eyeballing each plan average cost and multiplying by the duration, the total costs are 6x14=84, 4x17=68, 3x22=66, and 2.5x29=72.5 billion dollars. The accelerated and aggressive plans are more expensive than the moderate plan! I suppose there's some additional overhead costs associated with keeping the program running for 29 years instead of 17, but I would have expected all the rush orders, overtime, and extra staff to make the faster programs much more expensive.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

scottlocklin 11y ago

Neither of these numbers is equal to or greater than 20. 20 is a "I don't know how to do this" number of years. 10 is building a dam. Quantum computing has already been "a thing" for longer than 20 years; careers have been made ... people have retired. Today we get news of 1 bit worth of progress made since 2001. Now we can factor 30 instead of 15....

mattlutze 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost The LHC was approved for construction start in 1995. The wiki article doesn't capture it but you can bet the science behind the design of the LHC wasn't all done the year before. It didn't achieve its first real goals until 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO LIGO was dreamed up in the 1960's to detect gravitational waves. Took until 2002 to get the first one built big enough to theoretically detect them, and until 2015 to finally get measurements demonstrating the existence of waves. Real science is slow. This "20 years means I don't know" business is indicative of perhaps not appreciating the difference between basic science and applied science/engineering. I know we're used to engineering projects pumping out new awesome tech every couple years, but basic science is hard and takes a long time.
- scottlocklin 11y ago
  Ligo was most certainly not dreamed up in the 1960s, and the LHC was completed in 10 years. I picked the word "technology" instead of "science" on purpose. Science isn't slow or fast; it can't be predicted at all. Technologies; different story. Someone says I'm going to build you a piece of technology and it will take 20 years, that means they don't know how to do it. There are no exceptions.

drjesusphd 11y ago

> I suspect a lot of projects are accurately classified as 10-30 years away, given a certain level of funding and a dedicated team Precisely. Take fusion for instance: http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg This is the source of the "joke" that fusion will always be 20 years away. It's because it's been grossly under-funded ever since that prediction was made.

Trundle 11y ago
This is really interesting! Have you read the source report? I'm curious as to why/how the predicted required budget would fluctuate so much. For such a specialised and frontier based project, surely you'd be aiming for consistent staffing (and thus consistent staff budgets) year on year no?
- drjesusphd 11y ago
  My guess is that is fluctuates because there are a discrete number of new experiments to be constructed, and these don't cost a constant amount during their construction.
  - LeifCarrotson 11y ago
    That was my guess as well. Looking at the graphs, there are about three clear peaks in the maximum, accelerated, and aggressive plans, muddled out a bit in the moderate plan. What are these three experiments? Which of them have already been done in the existing plan? And what others might need to be added? Also curious is the expected total cost. Eyeballing each plan average cost and multiplying by the duration, the total costs are 6x14=84, 4x17=68, 3x22=66, and 2.5x29=72.5 billion dollars. The accelerated and aggressive plans are more expensive than the moderate plan! I suppose there's some additional overhead costs associated with keeping the program running for 29 years instead of 17, but I would have expected all the rush orders, overtime, and extra staff to make the faster programs much more expensive.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]