Cost estimates ballooned with each Congressional hearing, from $8.25 billion to $11 billion to $13 billion just before the end. In the last six months, the project had become the target of accusations of mismanagement. "And then Congress, in its infinite wisdom, said 'Oops, no.' The future does not look bright."īut even the supercollider's staunchest supporters admitted that over the years it had become a choice target for budget cutters. "We went at this with the painfully derived support of three administrations and got it 20 percent finished," said the Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman, a prominent backer of the project. The death of the project stunned its supporters. The new crop of freshman Representatives no longer accords big science the prestige it enjoyed during the cold war, and their opposition proved overwhelming. How did so grand a venture stumble so badly when the physicists who had skillfully sold the project to the White House and Congress seemed so well in control of its political protection? Despite an auspicious beginnings, the project's leaders appear to have failed to sense the changing mood in Washington toward big science.
AFTER the expense of $2 billion and 10 miles of tunnels dug beneath the Texas chalk, the largest pure science project ever attempted, the superconducting supercollider, was killed last week in an emotional Congressional session.
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