Well, the Higgs has strict technical requirements -- a collider capable of getting comfortably over the energies needed to create the thing without it fading in

Well, the Higgs has strict technical requirements -- a collider capable of getting comfortably over the energies needed to create the thing without it fading into background noise. That took a lot of engineering progress, software, money, and political will to get to. Whereas this is a much less.. involved creation. The experimental requirements aren't nearly as vast. (I found some details on the requirements here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/246841/why-did-it-take-so-long-to-find-the-higgs https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/246841/why-did-i... )