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 15:25:51 GMT

In article <Bs3qCo.77A@apollo.hp.com>, nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter
Nelson) writes:
|>In article <1992Jul27.151206.17220@dscomsf.desy.de>
|>Poser@vxdsyc.desy.de writes:
|>>In article <01GMUWFKMPZK001FEW@utarlg.uta.edu>,
|>B645ZAW@UTARLG.UTA.EDU 
|>>(Stephen Tice) writes:
|>>|>I may type in a fuller treatment of the data-handling problem later
|>in
|>>|>the week. {Mr. Austern, will also want to take note.} I said that
|>the
|>>|>figure being "bandied about" is a "Terabyte per nanosecond," and
|>>
|>>In all the below kvetching I fail to see how You arrive at the
|>Tbyte/ns
|>>figures.
|>>
|>>|>submit the following teasers. From the Conference Record of the
|>1991
|>>|>IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference,
|>Nov.
|>>|>2-9, 1991, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, vol 2 of 3...
|>>|>
|>>|>  "Data Acquisition Studies fro the Superconducting Super
|>Collider"
|>>|>  by Milner, Booth, Botlo, Dorenbosch, and Wang of the Physic
|>Research
|>>|>  Division of the SSC, and Idate, Kappor, and Raj of the University
|>of
|>>|>  Texas, p. 929:
|>>|>
|>>|>    The collider will provide a beam crossing every 16 ns, with a
|>mean
|>>|>    of 1.6 collisions per crossing (100 mb cross section) occuring
|>at
|>  
|>
|> . . . blah, blah, blah
|> 
|>
|> Oh, Jeezus!     If you're going to post this to talk.politics, then
|> at least do us the courtesy of addressing the POLITICAL side of the 
|> issue, which is:  *Why* should we taxpayyers fund this?   I asked
|>this 
|> question before and got NO response.

Before addressing that question I wanted to lay aside the technical
points in Mr Tice's disinformation. Otherwise it's a bit like trying to
carry on a debate about funding research into the role of trillobites in
evolution while a creation "scientist" is claiming that the basic theory
is false to start with.


|> Last week John Silber had an editorial in the Wall Street Journal 
|> in favor of the Supercollider.  He cited spinoff's in areas of 
|> transportation, energy, construction and subcontractor spending, etc.
|> But none of his suggested advantages were a result of the high-energy
|> physics research itself; they were engineering and economic results
|> of *building* the project!    So if THAT's the reason to do this
|> why not spend the money directly on those other things (if you're
|> into that kind of government activity)?    

The scientific curiosity alone does not justify the enormous expense.
The spinoffs are a major part of the justification of the project. One
of the caveats that I would put upon support for the SSC is that they
should take a much more agressive line in persuing such spinoffs.

To accept that spinoffs from projects like the SSC can be as valuable as
the "direct approach" it is necessary to consider the areas in which
spinoffs are to be expected. One major area is in investigating how
large and complex systems can be designed and manufactured, this has a
host of spinoffs in the areas of CAD/CAM. It is important to realise
that scale brings problems, it is not enough to simply investigate
phenomena on a smalll scale, build small protoypes and claim that the
job is done. Techniques need to be developed to cope with complexity, my
own research into building reliable software systems for large, complex
systems is one example of this.

Another argument for  building large projects is the expanding horizons
argument. One of the major things you learn during an engineering
course, aside from the technical detail is your own capabiities. You
discover that you are capable of designing and building a machine
costing several million pounds and be reasonable sure that it will meet
certain criteria. Large projects like ZEUS serve as a proof that it is
indeed feasable to build and run machines of a very high degree of
complexity reliably.

Of course projects like ZEUS do not serve as a replacement for basic
research. However they do serve as a testbed for various techniques.
Normaly an engineer is going to be quite loath to commit large sums of
money to using a technique which is untried, no matter how good the
theoretical basis for the design. Projects like ZEUS force such
techniques to be applied.

One important benefit that international projects bring is bring is
technology interchange. Usualy such interchange is at the corporate
level, this is demarcated on commercial lines. We have Japaneese,
German, US and British engineers working in the same rooms on the same
projects. The various strengths and weaknesses of the different
approaches becomes apparent. Of course you may take the beggar thy
neighbour approach which maintains that such interchange merely
dissipates US expertise for no benefit in return, however I think that
the US still has a lot to learn from the Japaneese and Germans, they
certainly want to learn more from the US.

Technology interchange is even more crucial when one considers the need
to industrialise the third world and modernise eastern european
industry. Until they learn about modern control theory any hopes we have
for them improving their environmental record are pretty slim. Although
individual problems can be tackled on a piecemeal basis through direct
intervention, they need much more than being sent the occasional SWAT
team of engineers to solve one off problems. What they need is to learn
the whole process, the way that the system fits together. This can only
be learned by doing since even we are not entirely sure what the system
is or how it works. Once again you may regard this as a demand for US
philanthropy, if so I would point out that unless the third world
drasticaly improves it's industrial performance, the West will never get
it's loans repaid. Secondly I don't think that the flow of benefits will
in fact be one way. Just as the Japaneese demonstrated that a primitive
agricultural nation had a lot to teach the world about being an
industrial superpower, there will be intangible benefits from the
developing world.

In summary, the spinoff benefits to be expected from such a project
depend criticaly on the mindset of the people concerned. If the
intention behind the SSC is simply to stick a US flag on it and produce
Dysney films about the triumph of US technology there will be few
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. It is also more likely to be affordable since the usual
arrangement for joining a collaboration such as the SSC is that each
group pays for and produces one or more components. Here on ZEUS, the UK
built the central tracking Detector, the Italians the Muon Chambers, the
Dutch much of the second level triggering system, the Japaneese the
first level trigger, the Canadians the third level, the US lent us 550
tonne Uranium for the calorimeter which they (and others) manufactured.
The Spanish built the Luminosity monitor, The Polish the Backing
calorimeter, The Germans various electronics and mechanical items and
the Israelis developed various software systems.

I have only touched upon some of the spinoff benefits, there are rather
more tangible ones for the state of Texas itself, not least the SSC must
be seen there as a bid to create a successor industry to support the
state once the Oil runs out.


Phill Hallam-Baker


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