I know it was scraped…but what about the technology that was supposed to go with it?
Do not bring this subject up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Peace,
mangeorge
“So I said, supercollidor? I just met her.
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and then they built a supercollidor. Thank you”
I am in DFW.
well i think they have built/are building one or more somewhere in other parts of the world…
right now its a big hole in the ground!
The technology is still out there. Scattered. Here’s one example:
WTF??
Perhaps because Texans were excited about “getting” the Superconducting Supercollider. I remember when other areas were still being considered, the scientific community in each area was agog over who would recieve the honor.
Um, and surely it was “scrapped”?
I was a physics student at Texas A&M when the funding for the Superconducting SuperCollider was cut. A lot of my profs were involved with Fermilab and Cern and they were very eagerly looking forward to the SSC. After it was announced that it was cancelled, they were shellshocked. It was a huge blow. For weeks they had an expression on their face like their best friend just died.
The big-ass cyclotron (particle accellerator) that was being built in Texas, until Regan or Bush (whoever) cancelled it.
The scientific community and the contractors were mightily pissed. Lost a lot of jobs. Or maybe I’m thinking of something else? That’s not the SSC?
That’s what the fuck is, Q.E.D. 
Ah, well…that answers that. 
King George I used his political clout to get it located in Texas. Congress pulled the plug on the funding. 
I was glad when this thing got axed. Notwhithstanding the chagrin of the particle physicists and contrators in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area, I could never understand why I as an average American taxpayer would want to help pay for this thing. It seemed more useless than the space program, and not even cool pictures from Mars in return. There are (and was then) many, many more worthy things to spend the money on.
Such as perhaps the human genome project and molecular biology ? :dubious:
There was a bit of a struggle going on for “big science” bucks back in the early 90’s.
No, thanks. I prefer the private sector.
This is the kind of short-sightedness that never fails to amaze me.
Now that the funding is cut, the government is spending the money on more worthy things? Please.
It was physicists who were wasting money fooling around with things like X-rays and inventing nonsense gadgets like electron microscopes and lasers.
So let’s stop expanding our knowledge and stick to sheltering the homeless.
Here’s a clue: We can do both.
Or they can cut my taxes. Just don’t put my money in a big hole in the ground for no concrete benefit.
Clone me a new pancreas. Until then I want pretty pictures from Mars. Or plasma.
I’m on it.
The most accessable piece I’ve seen on the aftermath of the SSC cancellation was by Bruce Sterling back in 1994.
Meanwhile, the accelerator and detector technologies being developed for it weren’t thrown away, they have been incorporated into smaller research projects elsewhere in the US and Europe.
As someone who was part of the particle physics community at the time, I’m obviously biased and have no particular wish to rake over a political argument we obviously lost. But it’s a bit silly to pretend that there have been “no concrete benefits” from such blue-sky, technology intensive research. A cloned pancreas might be useful, but in the meantime this sort of thing helps if your current one goes wrong.