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There is an old joke that the US government cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas because it would "cost too much" primarily. Yes, a lot o

There is an old joke that the US government cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas because it would "cost too much" primarily. Yes, a lot of cap-ex, but it would have also employed an army of Physics and other PhDs (2000+ staff.) The cost was in the single digit billions. The joke goes that all those PhDs had to find work, and found well-paying jobs on Wall St, created exotic derivatives, and blew up the world. Then we paid hundreds of billions to solve the 2008 financial crisis.

jfkfmgmvmvm 4y ago
$2 billion had already been spent with only a tunnel bored. Officials said it needed $12B more. It was a money pit. Many scholars were against it.
tawaycrypto 4y ago
Not only that developed countries/NGOs blame developing countries for investing in science related projects. They think money is wasted. My country gets this crap all the time.
wizardforhire 4y ago
Spoiler alert: It’s funny because it’s true.
ecpottinger 4y ago
Well, my friend study in university for Nuclear Physics, yet ended up working for the Toronto Stock Exchange programming monitoring software of the trades. They also paid a full year's bonus for working in December for Y2K, so yes, there is the money.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  One of the reasons progress in physics has been slow is because Wall St hoovered up much of the talent. Even if you have a good PhD, opportunities in physics are very limited. And they don't pay all that well. Get a job as a quant and it's not remotely hard to earn $500k a year.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    Not just Wall St, but also Silicon Valley. For several years it felt like the big names would literally just hire everyone they could with exorbitant salaries to starve the rest of the market (and other markets by proxy). A bunch of our brightest spent their energy trying to shove one more ad in your brain.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
The story I've heard is that Congress was wary of the growing deficit and gave the president a choice of going forward with either TSSC or ISS. The political optics of a space station are much better than those of a super collider and there was still a desire to have aerospace projects for former Soviet scientists to be engaged in so they wouldn't end up working for a terror state. Had TSSC been picked over ISS, those Wall Street quants might have been kept busy underground in Texas but the folks who created the International Space Station would have been left to find their own opportunities, with unknown consequences.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  > ... but the folks who created the International Space Station would have been left to find their own opportunities, with unknown consequences. Space-X and its ilk decades earlier? Might not have been too bad... Except of course half of them might have gone to work for Russia (or those private actors) developing ICBMs and hypersonic missiles. So maybe we'd all be speaking Russian now, praising God-Emperor Putler. (ETA: or Elon or Jeff. But those, probably in English. Small mercies...)
ArnoVW 4y ago
On YT there's a science history documentary Channel "BobbyBrocoli". He did a trilogy on the SSC saga. Recommend it (and his other docs) : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVzGpznw1U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVzGpznw1U

jfkfmgmvmvm 4y ago

$2 billion had already been spent with only a tunnel bored. Officials said it needed $12B more. It was a money pit. Many scholars were against it.

tawaycrypto 4y ago

Not only that developed countries/NGOs blame developing countries for investing in science related projects. They think money is wasted. My country gets this crap all the time.

wizardforhire 4y ago

Spoiler alert: It’s funny because it’s true.

ecpottinger 4y ago

Well, my friend study in university for Nuclear Physics, yet ended up working for the Toronto Stock Exchange programming monitoring software of the trades. They also paid a full year's bonus for working in December for Y2K, so yes, there is the money.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
One of the reasons progress in physics has been slow is because Wall St hoovered up much of the talent. Even if you have a good PhD, opportunities in physics are very limited. And they don't pay all that well. Get a job as a quant and it's not remotely hard to earn $500k a year.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  Not just Wall St, but also Silicon Valley. For several years it felt like the big names would literally just hire everyone they could with exorbitant salaries to starve the rest of the market (and other markets by proxy). A bunch of our brightest spent their energy trying to shove one more ad in your brain.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

The story I've heard is that Congress was wary of the growing deficit and gave the president a choice of going forward with either TSSC or ISS. The political optics of a space station are much better than those of a super collider and there was still a desire to have aerospace projects for former Soviet scientists to be engaged in so they wouldn't end up working for a terror state. Had TSSC been picked over ISS, those Wall Street quants might have been kept busy underground in Texas but the folks who created the International Space Station would have been left to find their own opportunities, with unknown consequences.

CRConrad 4y ago
> ... but the folks who created the International Space Station would have been left to find their own opportunities, with unknown consequences. Space-X and its ilk decades earlier? Might not have been too bad... Except of course half of them might have gone to work for Russia (or those private actors) developing ICBMs and hypersonic missiles. So maybe we'd all be speaking Russian now, praising God-Emperor Putler. (ETA: or Elon or Jeff. But those, probably in English. Small mercies...)

ArnoVW 4y ago

On YT there's a science history documentary Channel "BobbyBrocoli". He did a trilogy on the SSC saga. Recommend it (and his other docs) : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVzGpznw1U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVzGpznw1U