A particular bone of contention was the project’s initial lack of a cost-and-schedule control system, which by then had become mandatory practice for managing large military-construction and development projects overseen by the Department of Defense. For example, the methods by which SSC general manager Edward Siskin and magnet division director Thomas Bush managed large projects and developed sophisticated components differed greatly from those customarily employed by high-energy physicists. Troublesome clashes occurred at the SSC between the high-energy physicists and engineers who had been recruited largely from the shrinking US military–industrial complex as the Cold War wound down during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Having faced problems similar to, though not as severe as, what the SSC project experienced, the LHC’s completion raises an obvious question: Why did CERN and its partner nations succeed where the US had failed? (The SSC, by comparison, was designed for 40 TeV collision energy.) When labor costs and in-kind contributions from participating nations are included, the total LHC price tag approached $10 billion, a figure often given in the press. Evans, ed., The Large Hadron Collider: A Marvel of Technology, EPFL Press (2009), especially chap. Although the LHC project also experienced trying growth problems and cost overruns-its cost increased from an estimated 2.8 billion Swiss francs ($2.3 billion at the time) in 1996 to more than 4.3 billion Swiss francs in 2009-it managed to survive and become the machine that allowed the Higgs-boson discovery using only about half of its originally designed 14 TeV energy. Serious design efforts begun during the late 1980s and early 1990s ramped up after the SSC’s termination.
In contrast, CERN followed a genuinely international approach in the design and construction of its successful Large Hadron Collider (LHC), albeit at a much more leisurely pace than had been the case for the SSC. That phrase became lodged firmly in my mind throughout the many years I was researching its history. Wolfgang “Pief” Panofsky, founding director of SLAC, voiced that possibility during a private conversation in the months after the project’s demise he suggested that perhaps the SSC project was “a bridge too far” for US high-energy physics. But recent research and documents that have come to light have led me to an important new conclusion: The project was just too large and too expensive to have been pursued primarily by a single nation, however wealthy and powerful. Primary among them are the project’s continuing cost overruns, its lack of significant foreign contributions, and the end of the Cold War. Kolb, Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider, U. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 2nd ed., Harvard U. At least a dozen good reasons have been suggested for the demise of the SSC.
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