> but I think one of the biggest reasons is that it's very hard to institutionalize the sort of knowledge that you get by building something yourself. I think

> but I think one of the biggest reasons is that it's very hard to institutionalize the sort of knowledge that you get by building something yourself. I think that's true, but that fact doesn't really lend much support the idea of building another large accelerator now rather than in a few generations time. Maybe this generation has the time to build another big accelerator using its existing experience, but why build one at all if there aren't clear goals for what it will accomplish and the experience will be lost regardless? All you'd be doing is spending money to spread out the re-learning process.