In three days of hearings last month by the Science, Technology and Space Committee, a stream of witnesses also expressed doubts about the value of recently discovered superconductive materials in the design of the project and concern about the short timetable for site selection and the massive project's impact on the rest of science and the federal deficit.
Herwig Schopper, director-general of CERN, provided a grim scenario for the SSC based on a scarcity of funds available for science in Europe. "If we would propose such a project of that size, it would not go through because the emphasis [in Europe] is on costefficiency and cost-effectiveness," he said.
Schopper advocated a less energetic hadron, or proton, collider reaching about 9 TeV in each beam to sit above the ring of magnets for CERN's Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider, a circular electron accelerator slated to begin operation in early 1989. "The hadron ...
