![]() The decision would leave the Supercollider about one-fifth complete, giving Waxahachie a sprinkling of laboratory buildings above ground and a 10-mile hole beneath it. Physicists proposed to accelerate the protons to nearly the speed of light and then crash them into each other, hoping to release still-smaller particles that could resolve basic questions about the nature of matter. As first envisioned, the Supercollider was to be a 54-mile oval, a tube as big as a submarine deep beneath the Earth, that would serve as a sort of race track for tiny atomic particles called protons. If the vote stands, construction on the Supercollider will finally come to a halt. But there is no easy way to cut this budget." "This may be a good program," said Representative Sam Coppersmith, Democrat of Arizona. What killed the program was their assertion that the taxpayers could no longer afford it. Instead, after repeated redesigns and additions that more than doubled its cost, it has become a potent reminder of the nation's wasted fiscal muscle.Ĭritics did not argue today that the Supercollider was bad science or even a waste of money. When it was first conceived in 1982, proponents said the project would cost $4.5 billion and stand as a global symbol of American technological supremacy. Nonetheless, the noises emanating from the House sounded a lot like death rattles for the Supercollider, a program already in serious peril from staggering cost overruns, mismanagement, its own visibility and the growing political impetus to cut Federal spending. That proposal passed, 242 to 143.Ī leading critic of the project in the Senate, Dale Bumpers, Democrat of Arkansas, said the House votes were "encouraging, but not conclusive." The Supercollider cannot be certified dead until the House disposes of the entire $22.5 billion water and energy bill, he said. ![]() Minutes later it did vote to ship the bill back to the House-Senate panel, but with orders that financing for the Supercollider be removed. The vote today turned back that effort to. House supporters of the project knew they lacked the votes to keep the $640 million allotment in the bill, and so they tried to buy time by sending the measure back to a House-Senate committee. Renewed Fighting PossibleĪt issue was whether the House should give its final okay to a bill allotting $22.5 billion for hundreds of water and energy projects around the country, including $640 million that the Senate had approved for continued construction of the Supercollider. Johnston called the vote "a sad day for science," adding that the demise of the project called into question the nation's commitment to expensive scientific research of all kinds. "Their message on deficit reduction and the Superconducting Supercollider was clear and unmistakable." The Senate, he said, "must find a way to accommodate this message." "The House is wrong, but they have a right to be wrong," said Mr. Bennett Johnston, said the project appeared to be lost. But after today's 264-to-159 vote on a crucial procedural vote in the House, its most important advocate in the Senate, J. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 23.5km of tunnel were bored by late 1993.The House pushed a stake through the heart of the $11 billion Superconducting Supercollider program today, voting emphatically, for the second time since June and the third time in 16 months, to reject financing for the vast Texas atom-smasher.Įach time, the Senate has rescued the project, which has already cost $2 billion, from the House attempts to kill it. Department of Energy review was done during the mid-1980s. ![]() ![]() Fermilab director and subsequent Nobel physics prizewinner Leon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect or proposer – of the Superconducting Super Collider project, which was endorsed around 1983, and a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.An extensive U.S. The project was cancelled in 1993 due to budget problems.Proposal and developmentThe system was first formally discussed in the December 1976 National Reference Designs Study, which examined the technical and economic feasibility of a machine with the design capacity of 20 TeV per proton. Louis Ianniello served as its first Project Director for 15 months. The project's director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. It would have greatly surpassed the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider which has ring circumference 27km and energy of 6.5 TeV per proton. Description: The Superconducting Super Collider was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas.Its planned ring circumference was 87.1km with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was set to be the world's largest and most energetic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |