🚀 go-pugleaf

The main purpose of SSC is to satisfy the curiosity of High Energy
Physicists and the people who think that the science is worthwhile
(not to speak of advancing scientific and academic careers and so on).
This curiosity, presumably is a valuable subset of all Human Curiosity,
and is worth gratifying. Presumably then, all Humanity ought to bear
the costs of the experiment as well (as well as share in the construction
pork).

But science is funded for more practical reasons and in a more nationalistic
way. IMO, our scientific ambitions are now colliding with the limits of
what is possible in the present political (and economic) order.
($10 billion would be very small change in a world in which most people
were producing enough so as not to have mass hunger and poverty. 5 billion
people would give $2 each; which is a lot of money today, considering that
of the order of a billion people make around $300 an year.)

It seems to me that if we want to be able to have SSCs and space stations
and other large projects we need to make a change around here first.

-arun gupta
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu