From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Supercollider "For" or "Against"
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 23:31:06 GMT

In article <Bs43Ao.EB0@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter
Nelson) writes:

|>  Agreed.  But as long as we're doing that, why not do it in the context
|>  of some practical, directly beneficial project, e.g., a high tech re-
|>  placement for the Internet, a modern mass-transit system or whatever,
|>  if we feel that government *has* to spend the money on some kind of Big
|>  Engineering project?   Or why not distribute the money to US engineering
|>  companies such as Boeing, Ford, Motorola, (ahem) Hewlett Packard, etc
|>  with the proviso that it be spent on corporate R&D?   I'm not actually
|>  advocating, this, just suggesting that we could spend the money in 
|>  ways that would be more likley to to ensure US technological leadership
|>  and jobs in the years to come.  

A high tech Internet replacement could indeed be justified in that
manner. However the project would be focused in one particular area of
one particular field, there would not be the same bringing together of
widely differing fields.

As for just giving the money direct to industry, in a sense that is
indeed what will happen, the money for the collider will end up buying
high tech equipment, much of it requiring custom design. It is much more
beneficial to pay for a specific piece of research that has a tangible,
deliverable end product than to simply give the money away.

|>  But I'm still unsure of your point -- if there is a societal or
|>  commercial need to "build and run machines of a very high degree of
|>  complexity reliably" then why not gain our experience meeting whatever 
|>  that need is.

Until a capability is demonstrated society is usualy slow to realise the
need it fulfils. 


|>  And if not then why spend the money at all?     Note
|>  that some US companies such as Boeing with their development of their
|>  777 or Motorola with their proposed satellite network are already
|>  spending thousands of millions of dollars on daring, large-scale,
|>  bleeding edge, high-complexity design and manufacturing projects.  

And getting highly subsidised in the process. Boeing got the cash to
build the 747 from the profits it made on planes for the military. The
whole satelite program is a spin off from a project that originaly began
with a need to save US face after Sputnik. 

One reason why I see the SSC as necessary is in the context of gradually
scaling down the arms race there is an urgent need to keep the expertise
and technological base that it created. Military spending tends to be
much less good at producing spinoffs in general since the need for
secrecy compartmentalises expertise. After the cold war is over we need
to rescue as much of that expertise as possible lest it be lost.


|>  But private industry already does this.  Here at Hewlett Packard 
|>  this sort of collaboration is a routine occurence, as I'm sure it 
|>  is at most other multinational corporations.

Private industry is driven by commercial pressures, when I worked in
industry the standard payback time demanded was 6 months, projects
taking two years required special sanctions, only exceptional areas
could persue "long term" ten year projects. The research was entirely
driven by the market. Because all the firms exist in the same market,
inovation tends to proceed along much the same lines in each. Projects
like the SSC cut across the market, they produce demands which otherwise
would not exist. 

|>>benefits. If you want the thing to serve as a gateway between different
|>>expertise and cultures like CERN has done for over 40 years then it may
|>>be worthwhile.
|>
|>  But again, I claim this happens on a huge scale, routinely in private
|>  industry.

Viewing public and private research as equivalent is not really
justified. They both serve different but complimentary needs. Private
research will always exceed public research. However private research is
focused on producing private gain. The smart way to use public research
is to refocus the private research in such a way that it produces public
gains. Patent  busting, such as merely producing drugs with equivalent
effects to existing ones has little public benefit, it would in fact be
more beneficial to society to simply sell off the rights to violate
patent rights on a random basis. What is needed is methods of forcing
industry to research in new areas.

|>   But what is that industry?    People drill oil up out of the ground, 
|>   refine it, and sell it.  There's an industry.  It produces oil and
|>   refined petroleum products and people pay money for these things.   
|>   What will people pay for from the supercollider? 

The supercollider will bring in a large supply of skilled labour.
Companies will set up project offices to serve it, other companies will
move in to serve them. The SSC is a big enough project with the 
critical mass to create a high tech manufacturing community. Just as
Silicon glen rose around the California Airframe makers, Texas should
expect something of a high tech industry to take off arround Dallas.

|>  If that's the philosophy then 
|>   spend the money instead on building up some of Dallas' already fine 
|>   teaching hospitals into world-class centers for research on cancer,
|>   AIDS, etc.

Research is not something you can target too finely. There are not so
much problem areas as solution areas. This is very apparent to me
working as a computer specialist. I have worked in Control engineering,
Chemical Engineering, Silicon design, Information Engineering, a whole
host of problem areas applying basicaly the same solutions. 

Now I cannot give a likely application of the SSC to AIDs. However the
accelerator technology does have direct application to medical
treatment.  Oxford Instruments have developed a cyclotron which was used
as a cheap source of short lived isotopes used for medical diagnosis.
The basement of the Nuclear Physics Dept at Oxford has been home to
another Oxford Instruments cyclotron which was recently sold to IBM for
use as a source of high energy X rays for producing microcircuits with
sub micron minimum feature sizes. They hope this will help them get
round the problem of the wavelength of UV light being too large to
reduce the feature size much more. This will allow faster computers to
be built which may eventualy allow a cure to be found for diseases such
as AIDS. 

I don't know, the whole point about going off into the unknown is that
the easiest route to the hill you can see in the distance is not
necessarily to head off in the direction of sight. It's a good idea to
try that path. However it's also a good idea to try other directions asd
well. If you have a lot of people it's best that you all try different
routes. If you are a mountain climber expert it's better to try the path
through the mountains rather than join the rest going through the
swamp...


Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton