From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: SuperCollider: "For" or "Against" -- Tell the Committee  @ tele...
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 13:03:32 GMT

In article <1992Jul25.225206.13926@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>, MrEd@GreenAcres writes:

|>In article <1992Jul25.172855.2163@dscomsf.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de  
|>(Phillip M. Hallam-Baker) writes:
|>> In article <1992Jul24.171755.25005@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>, MrEd@GreenAcres  
|>writes:
|>> 
|>> > |>> >|>What they aren't saying in the Dallas Morning News is that it
|>> |>> >|>cost about $8 billion to construct the SSC over 8 years, that
|>> |>> >|>it has about a 25 year projected lifespan and that it will
|>> |>> >|>take about a billion dollars a year to run.
|>> |>> >
|>> |>> >Thats because it's not true.
|>> |>> >
|>> |>If you don't know the figures, how can you possibly say that those
|>> |>provided by the previous poster were inaccurate. 
|>> 
|>> What I can say is that there is no reason why the running costs for the
|>> SSC should be substantialy higher than they are for HERA ZEUS and H1 and
|>> that these are at least three orders of magnitude less than Mr Tice's
|>> claim.
|>> 
|>Mr Tice's claim is $1 [us] billion = $ 10^9. per year
|>Three orders of magnitude less   = $ 10^6 = $1 million
|>(ie) You say there is no reason why the running costs of SSC should be  
|>substantially higher than $1 million.
|>Without regard to support staff, overhead, power and other utilities etc, 
|>suppose SSC only employed 20 scientists averaging $50,000 each.
|>That alone is $1 million.
|>If SSC is as important as claimed, I would have thought it would employ  
|>"significantly" more than 20 scientists. Ergo, the indirect claim
|>(constructed  
|>from your statements above) that it will only cost about a million a
|>year to  
|>run the SSC is patently absurd.

True that personel costs outweigh any utility costs. However there is no
reason why the SSC requires substantialy more staff than we do. The
figure I gave was for the running costs minus personel, this I got by
asking someone who happened to be in the control room who has a hand in
such matters.

Remember that the staff are not going to all be paid out of SSC funds.
The majority will be scientists and engineers supported by Universities
and /or industry, not all of which wil be from the US. Looking in the
ZEUS picture book, less than 10% of collaboration members are actually
paid for by DESY.

Mr Tice is trying to maintain that the cost of running the SSC is going
to be substantialy higher than the cost of running existing experiments.
In this respect the only factors that need to be considered are those
likely to differ. I was simply pointing out that the costs of running
machines of that type arn't that high in the first place.

BTW your analysis of cost of employment is also out substantialy since
the grad students who run the damn things are to a first order
approximation free.


|>> Please don't assume that I am arguing either for or against here. I am
|>> merely pointing out that Mr Tice has not got his facts straight. Until
|>> we have agreement on what the costs are likely to be there is little
|>> point in arguing any further.
|>> 
|>I am not arguing for or against either here. I just wish Mr Tice would
|>provide  
|>support for his claim and you would provide evidence for your
|>rebutttal.  

Until Mr Tice provides some facts rather more precise than he has so far
there is no real point in providing a full rebuttal. 

If I can break into my office I will dig out the SDC letter of intent.
However since running costs are in general not significant with respect
to initial capital costs I'm not sure that they will be quoted.


As far as I am aware the suggestion for how to meet the running costs of
the SSC is to close down one of the existing labs. I personal suspect
this is likely to be Stanford since an earthquake zone is not a great
place to build such things. Also the policy of using the maintenance
budget to build new machines has left much of the infrastructure there
in a delapidated state which would require (expensive) repair before any
new project was started.

It is important to bear in mind that the SSC is not an additional
proposal, it is going to replace existing HEP programs. Some additional
funds will be required to build it, however unless the US intends to
withdraw from particle physics entirely some of the funds at least will
be comming from existing sources.


Phill Hallam-Baker