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True, it's sad that it was going to overrun costs. But it was ambitious--imagine how ahead of its time it was if it could have achieved 40TeV 20 years ago. It
by IvyMike 11y ago
True, it's sad that it was going to overrun costs. But it was ambitious--imagine how ahead of its time it was if it could have achieved 40TeV 20 years ago.
It's also depressing when you consider what we did decide to spend money on. The cost of air conditioning alone in Iraq was $20B. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/21/air-conditioning-military-cost-nasa_n_881828.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/21/air-conditioning-mi... Edit: I'm not suggesting we go to war and not keep our troops air conditioned--it was a necessity given the conditions. I'm suggesting that when such a tiny fractional cost of the war more than the cost of the SSC, maybe our sense of relative costs was warped.
- EpicEng 11y agoGo live in Iraq without air conditioning for a year and see how willing you'd be to give it up. There has to be a balance. Yes, we should invest in sciences. No, we will not convince people to give up things that may not matter in the long run, but matter very much in their day-to-day lives. Honestly, you should have used the defense budget as an example.
- melling 11y agoYep the SSC would have cost almost $20 billion in the end. I'm not sure how you put a price on the knowledge.
- bsder 11y agoIn addition, the SSC technologies spun out into many things and would have spun out into many more. Even such mundane things as "fire ant control" are important. People don't realize that science and space spin technology into general usage much faster than military.
- timr 11y agoJust to play devil's advocate -- and taking several levels of cynicism as a given -- the energy security of the USA is worth far more than what we ended up spending on the Iraq war. For all the money that the EU has spent on the LHC, it hasn't really paid off to that extent. Even if you consider "the web" as part of that payoff, it's not the equivalent of guaranteeing every person in the western world stable access to cheap energy. (I'm not saying I agree with that rationale for our adventures in Iraq, I just don't think it's quite fair to make the comparison you're making. There's more at stake in Iraq than a stable democracy for a small country.)
- btilly 11y agoFYI, "the internet" can be fairly credited to DARPA in the USA. It is "the web" that can be credited to the LHC.
- timr 11y agoYep, that's what I meant. Updated!
- Retric 11y agoIn a lesser known twist there was heavy debate on the SGML working group that documents shuld have embedded links. For various reasons that did not come to pass but it Effectivly pushed back the web by 5 years until HTML showed up. Presumably if DNS has been out just a little bit sooner the web would have taken off much sooner. Though computer cost and limitations may have set slowed adoption. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_L...
- lolive 11y agoThe web phenomenom is the appearance of four major components in a very short period of time: - HTML - HTTP - a graphical browser that even my mother can use - freely deployable web server software component Sure, HTML is an important piece of the cake. But the most important one is definitely ... (well, choose for yourself :)
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago> It is "the web" that can be credited to the LHC. I've missed something. Could you elaborate?
- Retric 11y agoI can see that as a justification for the first Iraq war, but the second only increased oil prices and destabilized the region.
- kiba 11y ago
- ars 11y ago> imagine how ahead of its time it was if it could have achieved 40TeV 20 years ago. Maybe. I'm not sure Computing power was up to the task. Look at the insane amount of storage the current machine needs.
- yoklov 11y agoTypically these sorts of things drive technological innovation.