🚀 go-pugleaf

Dr. Norman J. LaFave wrote: 
>Since thousands of experiments are planned over the lifetime of the device,
>it is misleading to designate the whole cost to this. Your arguements fail
>because the Supercollider is not a single experiment, not a single project,
>but a device to do thousands of experiments and hundreds of projects which employ
>thousands of people. The cost per experiment is rather small compared to
>the cost of funding these same people to build and run independent experiments.
>Furthermore, the cost per scientific discovery is always better with a flexible
>device like the Supercollider.

Well, I certainly agree with LaFave's stance on research in general and
the SSC in particular.  But I have to quibble with the facts as presented
above.

There are not ever likely to be anything approaching a thousand experiments
at the SSC.  There are only 2 large first generation detectors.  There
will also be a few (5-ish) smaller experiments installed, plus some "parasitic"
experiments, such as plastic-track detectors which don't require any major
installation effort or technical support from the SSC staff.

I think that the expected lifetime of the SSC is something like 20 years.
For crude comparison, Consider the Bevatron, built in the 1950's when 
experiments were *much* quicker and easier.  My thesis experiment is 
Experiment 902 - though I can't say when they started counting.  Even if 
it wasn't at the beginning, this pretty much limits the total number
of experiments ever run to a few thousand.  At the SSC experiments cost
100's of millions rather than 100's of thousands, and the lifetime total
is not likely to ever get close to 1000.

On the other hand, if you consider that each major detector is likely to 
publish dozens if not hundreds of papers on many different subjects, and that
each one could fairly be called a distinct "experiment" performed on the
same generic data set, then the number of experiments will easily number
in the 1000's.  

As far as the cost per scientist being small compared to funding each 
one individually - that's hard to imagine.  These scientists are already
being individually funded on smaller projects.  If your claim were true then
the HEP budget would have no problem accomodating the pooled needs of all
these people to get the SSC built - there should even be money left over.
This is clearly not the case.  At least the construction costs are above
and beyond any reasonable extrapolation of current expenditures on these
people.

-Scott

--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver